414 EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA. Chap. VI. 



small boat and one man to disembark from the steamer, 

 a distance of 100 yards. 



In rambling over my old ground in the forests of the 

 neighbourhood, I found great changes had taken place — 

 to me, changes for the worse. The mantle of shrubs, 

 bushes, and creeping plants which formerly, when the 

 suburbs were undisturbed by axe or spade, had been 

 left free to arrange itself in rich, full and smooth 

 sheets and masses over the forest borders, had been 

 nearly all cut away, and troops of labourers were still 

 employed cutting ugly muddy roads for carts and 

 cattle, through the once clean and lonely woods. 

 Houses and mills had been erected on the borders of 

 these new roads. The noble forest-trees had been cut 

 down, and their naked, half-burnt stems remained in 

 the midst of ashes, muddy puddles, and heaps of broken 

 branches. I was obliged to hire a negro boy to show 

 me the way to my favourite path near Una, which I 

 have described in the second chapter of this narrative ; 

 the new clearings having quite obliterated the old forest 

 roads. Only a few acres of the glorious forest near 

 Una now remained in their natural state. On the 

 other side of the city near the old road to the rice 

 mills, several scores of woodsmen were employed under 

 Government, in cutting a broad carriage-road through 

 the forest to Maranham, the capital of the neighbouring 

 province, distant 250 miles from Para, and this had 

 entirely destroyed the solitude of the grand old forest 

 path. In the course of a few years, however, a new 

 growth of creepers will cover the naked tree-trunks on 

 the borders of this new road, and luxuriant shrubs form 



