80 TROPICAL WILD LIFE IN BRITISH GUIANA 



and more spectacular in their vegetable eccentricities, while 

 the curtains of aerial roots are to be seen nowhere else. 



Jungles have been written about in every book of tropi- 

 cal travel, but have been really described in none. And they 

 will not be, any more than it is possible to give an accurate 

 word picture of a volcano in eruption. When one enters 

 the jungle for the first time, the feeling of awe and wonder, 

 the apparent hopeless confusion and inextricable mingling 

 of plants and animals, the juxtaposition of life and death, 

 of growth and decay ; these, with the magic of coloring and 

 form, totally inhibit clear description. The plethora of ad- 

 jectives and adverbs clogs all other grammatical forms. 

 And afterwards, when the hidden harmony begins to become 

 apparent by the following of some single thread, or the ends 

 of the least tangled skein, then one is too close for perspect- 

 ive, one has become too intimate for correct delineation of 

 the whole. It is equally difficult to describe at a glance the 

 face of a stranger, and to portray the expression of one's 

 most intimate friend. And with the jungle there seems no 

 middle course. So from inadequate words and over-detailed 

 photographs, one's image of the jungle must be mosaiced 

 unless one has, himself, enjoyed the supreme delight of 

 walking in these wonder aisles. 



I shall call attention only to a few details, which per- 

 haps from their very obviousness, are usually overlooked. 

 If one passes rapidly through the forest, the general effect 

 is of a mist of delicate foliage sifting through all the immen- 

 sities of twilight beneath the tree-tops high, high overhead. 

 This leaf age* sprayed through mid-air is such as we see early 

 in May in our northern woods. The principal difference 

 is that with us the delicacy of foliage is due to immaturity, 

 while here it is caused by the paucity of light. 



An important character of the jungle is the almost com- 

 plete absence of large, horizontal branches. Trees such as 

 our oaks, beeches and maples are unknown, and this I be- 

 lieve is due solely to the abundance and deadly character of 



