IN THE PRIMEVAL FOREST. 207 



primeval forest, or "Urwald," which has of late years been so prodi- 

 gally bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of the earth, 

 none can claim it, perhaps, so strictly as the region of which we are 

 speaking. The term "Urwald," primitive or primeval forest, as 

 well as Urseit and Urvolk primitive age, primitive nation are 

 words of rather indefinite meaning, and, for the most part, only 

 relative import. If this name is to be given to every wild forest full 

 of a thick growth of trees on which man has never laid a destroying 

 hand, then the phenomenon is one which belongs to many parts of 

 the temperate and cold zones. But if the character of the "Urwald" 

 is that of a forest so truly impenetrable, that it is impossible to clear 

 with an axe any passage between trees of eight or twelve feet 

 diameter for more than a few paces, then such forests belong exclu- 

 sively to the tropical regions. Nor is it by any means, as is often 

 supposed in Europe, only the interlacing " lianes" or climbers which 

 make it impossible to penetrate the forest; the "lianes" often form 

 only a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacle is 

 presented by an undergrowth of plants filling up every interval in a 

 zone where all vegetation has a tendency to become ligneous. An 

 impatient desire for the fulfilment of a long-cherished wish may 

 sometimes have led travellers who have only just landed in a tropical 

 country, or perhaps island, to imagine that although still in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of the sea-shore they had entered the precincts of a 

 primeval forest, or " Urwald," such as I have described as impene- 

 trable. In this they deceived themselves ; it is not every tropical 

 forest which is entitled to an appellation which I have scarcely ever 

 used in the narrative of nay travels ; although I believe that of all 

 investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius, Poppig, 

 Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, are those who have 

 spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior 

 of a great continent. 



Rich as is the Spanish language {as I have already remarked), 

 in appellations of distinct and definite meaning in the description 

 of nature, yet the same word " Monte" is employed for mountain 

 and forest, for cerro (montana), and for selva. In an inquiry 

 into the true breadth and greatest easterly extension of the chain 

 of the Andes ; I have showed how this twofold signification of the 



