334 TIMEHRI. 
open place, we soon recommenced our march, quickly get- 
ting over the small plateau and entering among the low 
bushes. This was the strangest tropical forest I had 
ever seen, and which I met with only once again in 
South America, on the small ridge at the summit of the 
Cumbre del San Hilario in the Coast-Andes of Puerto 
Cabello. Densely crowded together, the knotty twisted 
tree-trunks branch out from the very base, and then 
again bunch and fork one after another, so ‘that 
with the creeping vines, ferns, scitaminee and great 
masses of Geonoma palms (Geonoma maxima, G. acuti- 
flora, G. arundinacea, and G. baculigera) they form such a 4 
close thicket as to be almost impenetrable to man. Com- 
pletely covered with white-grey and sap-green mosses, 
which hang down in the greatest profusion like long 
beards, the most charming ferns, the most beautiful 
orchid blossoms, and the brilliant coloured braéts of the 
Tillandsias peep out and give this miniature forest a 
most odd appearance. 
The whole forest rises amidst great mounds of debris 
from the sandstone cliffs. Gigantic boulders overhang 
each other, held together by interlaced roots, often 
for short distances stretching over deep precipices so 
that a passage can only be made by climbing on a 
and on the tree tops. | 
We camped at a fairly level spot intending to stay for 
‘the night. My tent was put up and the Indians built 
small banaboos covered with fronds of the Geonoma 
“maxima. Drinking water was obtainable from a cistern= 
‘like excavation, thirty feet deep, where the forest over= — qa 
hung a precipice. As it was impossible to get down to | 
this we had to fasten our cooking vessels to bush-ropés 
