48 VALENCIA AND PUERTO CABELLO, 



thirty and forty feet in height, add their colossal forms to 

 the greater monarchs of the forest. Parasitic plants cover 

 the huge trunks and limbs of the trees, and vines interlace 

 their wide-spreading branches, forming a thick, tangled 

 mass of verdure through which no ray of the sun ever 

 penetrates. Beneath, constituting what might be called 

 the lower stratum of vegetation, are bushes, ferns, and 

 creeping plants, which are so thickly interwoven as to 

 make a net-work that is almost impenetrable. The earth 

 is densely carpeted with leaves, mosses, and lichens, and 

 strewn in the greatest profusion with thousands of fallen 

 flowers. Such was the forest into which we had entered. 

 Our guide preceded us. opening a way with his machete, 

 and the party followed in single file. We had not pene- 

 trated far in these deep solitudes before we discovered the 

 fresh tracks of a huge tiger deeply embedded in the soft 

 earth. After several hours of fruitless travel in these tan- 

 gled wilds, finding pursuit with any prospect of success im- 

 possible, we abandoned the attempt, and determined upon 

 our return, taking a different course from the one we had 

 come. But this soon brought us into difliculty, for our 

 circuitous mode of travelling bewildered the guide, and, 

 although he endeavored to keep the fact from us, we were 

 not long in making the rather lanpleasant discovery that, 

 for aught we knew, we were plunging deeper and deeper 

 into a boundless wilderness. We would descend one 

 mountain-ridge but to mount laboriously another. We 

 ascended the highest peaks, and climbed to the tops of the 

 tallest trees, only to be rewarded by the same cheerless, 

 interminable line of waving forest. Once were we glad- 

 dened by a view of the distant Lake of Tacarigua, but in 

 our wanderings in the inextricable labyrinth of woods our 

 direction was again lost. Nearly every step of our prog- 

 ress had to be cleared with the machete. Slowly we 

 toiled along, dragging our aching bodies wearily up pre- 



