VILLAGE OF SAN JUAN, 137 



i 



On our return to Veracruz, we stopped a couple of. 

 days at the little village of San Juan. The village con- 

 sisted of ten or fifteen huts, and its population was not 

 over seventv-flve or one hundred. It was situated, how- 

 ever, in the midst of a dense tropical jungle, and on this . 

 account was of great interest to us. On leaving the vil- 

 lage we walked along a straight country road, constructed 

 above the level of the surrounding land. It had low 

 swampy ground on one side, and the other was high 

 enough to be quite dry. Leaving the road and turning 

 into another, we arrived at a part where the lofty forest 

 towered up like a wall, five or six yards from the path, to 

 the height of a hundred feet. The trunks of the trees 

 were only seen partially here and there, nearly the whole 

 frontage from ground to summit being covered with a 

 drapery of creeping plants, all of the most vivid green ; 

 scarcely a flower was to be seen, except in some places a 

 solitary scarlet blossom, set in the green mantle. The low 

 ground on the borders, between the forest wall and the 

 road, was encumbered with a tangled mass of shrubby veg- 

 etation. About this spot numerous butterflies were sport- 

 ing in the warm sunlight. 



A mile further on the character of the woods changed, 

 and we found ourselves in the primeval forest. Here the 

 land was rather more elevated ; the many swamp plants 

 with their long and broad leaves were wanting, and there 

 was less underwood, although the trees were wide apart. In 

 almost every hollow was a little brock, whose cold, dark, 

 leaf stained waters were bridged over by tre-^i trunks. The 

 ground was carpeted by Lycopodiums — those beautiful 

 fern-like mosses — and was also encumbered with masses 

 of vegetable debris and a thick coating of dead leaves. 

 Fruits of many kinds were scattered about, among which 

 were rhany kinds >of beans, some of the pods being six 



