A PILGRIMAGE 71 



been secured. There are straight and curved 

 thorns of different lengths; some curve forward, 

 some curve back; and one of the back-curving 

 class has a barb-like addition somewhat like a fish 

 hook. When this double-thorned, unholy thought 

 breeder fastens upon you, do not try to yank your- 

 self free, but stop, return smilingly with the limb 

 to the parent bush and there sit you down with a 

 contrite heart and a patient hand to untiringly fol- 

 low the back track of the tenacious thorn. And 

 keep your eye open lest it further entrap you. 

 Once as I sat thus engaged— and thinking things- 

 other barbed thorned branches reached out while I 

 worked in happy industry, and embraced me by 

 the shoulders, at the collar, at the skirt of my coat, 

 in the pockets, so that when I finally arose I 

 stood in my shirt sleeves. The largest tree we saw, 

 sometimes attained to a diameter of two feet, 

 though half that was usually its average; always 

 its light gray trunk was smooth and bore no 

 branches until at its very top, which stood against 

 the early morning sky grotesquely. 



Mostly the jungle edge is noiseless. Just at the 

 first light of day when the stars are beginning to 

 fade and the darkness is losing some of its density, 

 birds begin to twitter: one with a voice like the 

 meadow lark ; one, a cross between a bobolink and 

 a canary; another, with a single note, first slow 



