390 REMOTE LEAFY WILDERNESSES. 



even under the Frigid Zone. But if we intend them to designate the 

 impenetrability of an almost boundless forest, the impossibility of 

 clearing a path with the pioneer's axe between serried ranks of trees, 

 not one of which is less than from eight to ten feet in diameter, such 

 virgin forests belong exclusively to tropical regions. We must not 

 believe, however, according to the ordinary story in Europe, in the 

 creeping parasitical lianas which, by the interlacement and entangle- 

 ment of their branches, render the equatorial forests impenetrable. 

 The lianas form but a comparatively insignificant portion of the un- 

 derwood. The principal obstacle is found in the arborescent plants, 

 which leave not a space uncovered, and this, too, in a country where 

 all vegetables spreading over the soil become ligneous. If a traveller, 

 as soon as he arrives in a tropical clime, whether in the continent or 

 the islands, believes, even before he has penetrated inland, that he is 

 transported to the heart of the virgin forests, his error simply origi- 

 nates in his impatience to realize a long-cherished desire. All Tropical 

 forests are not virgin forests. 



The true virgin forests, notwithstanding the recent explorations 

 of Wallace, Bates, and Agassiz, are very imperfectly known ; because 

 it is, in truth, perfectly impossible to survey them in every direction, 

 on account of their vast extent and astonishing impenetrability. 

 When we are told by the traveller that he opened for himself a path 

 with his trusty hatchet, we readily understand that he achieved his 

 boasted victory in places where the obstacles were reduced to feeble 

 lianas and brushwood of no great density, and that he turned aside 

 from the massive barriers formed by the closely-planted trunks of 

 colossal trees. Than these mighty vegetable Anakim, nothing, says a 

 naturalist, is more imperfectly known in botany. The stems of most 

 being bare and branchless up to a considerable height, their fructifica- 

 tion is frequently beyond the reach of man. In vain would he level 

 them by their base : their summits remain suspended by the inter- 

 tanglement of the neighbouring summits, and like so many Tantaluses, 

 our travellers see themselves shunned by the fruits which their eyes 

 devour. The 'rivers, those " tracks which march " through the leafy, 



