A LOST FEBRUARY 



narrow channel that joins it to the second pond. 

 Into this we made our way, and discovered that 

 it was semi-stagnant. It was a likely place for 

 crocodiles, but we saw none, — only a large, heron- 

 like water-fowl that was suspicious of our approach. 

 The most striking scene here was a kind of vege- 

 table Hades where we landed and tarried a short 

 time. If the bad spirits in the vegetable world go 

 to a bad place, this is probably where they bring up; 

 or, as I said to my son, if the human imps — mean- 

 ness, spitefuhiess, jealousy, uncharitableness, and 

 backbiting — were to take vegetable form, here we 

 doubtless see what they would be hke, — a thick, 

 rank growth of several forms of cacti, intermingled 

 with various thorned and fanged bushes standing 

 upon a jagged, crabbed, deeply seamed rocky floor. 

 Under the hot sun the place exhaled a peculiarly 

 disagreeable odor. With great difficulty I pushed 

 my way into it a few yards. If there had only been 

 a few writhing, hissing serpents there and a homed 

 toad or two, the scene would have been complete. 

 Some of the fluted, cyhndrical growths of cacti 

 towered up twenty feet, and were so thickly set with 

 rows of long, sharp, vicious needles that it fairly 

 made the eyes water to look at them. This was the 

 fanged side of tropical nature, and we soon had 

 enough of it. These huge growths of cacti were 

 fleshy and tender like fruit; one could hack into 

 them with his knife as into a melon or an apple, but 

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