WATER TRAIL FROM GEORGETOWN TO AREMU. 279 



These tacubas, which are really fallen trees, are the most 

 apparent danger in the jungle, although the chances of 

 accident from them are very slight. Along the bank were 

 many slanting trees, bound sooner or later to give way. On 

 our return journey down the Aremu we passed, or rather 

 scraped under, a huge trunk which completely spanned the 

 creek. It must have fallen about two days before and we 

 had to push through a perfect tangle of orchids and lianas. 



Tree-ferns twelve feet high draped the banks; spiders of 

 weird shapes dropped upon us, buoyed up by their long 

 silken cables; brush-tipped aerial roots dangling at the ends 

 of plummet lines fifty feet long were drawn from stem to 

 stern of the boat and across the pages of our journals as we 

 wrote. 



Half an hour after starting we discovered a Three-toed 

 Sloth (Cliohepus) high up in a tree almost over the water. 

 Mr. Howell shot the creature and we found it to be of 

 large size, with long reddish-brown hair. The face, expres- 

 sionless as it always is in these animals, had small eyes of a 

 warm hazel color. Later we had it cooked and found it 

 quite palatable. 



In many of these tropical grow^ths the new or first leaf- 

 shoots arc pale or brilliant red, this holding good in the case 

 of the giant moras, several trees with locust-like foliage, and 

 even the flat, leaf-vines, Monstera or shingle plants, crawling 

 up the trunks. One small tree with entire leaves and covered 

 with sweet-scented tassel -shaped flowers, had at least half 

 its foliage of a pale yellow-green. This is the spring of this 

 region in so far as such a region of never ending warmth and 

 moisture may be said to have a spring. On every hand 

 flowers were in abundance. All were unknown to us, but 

 most were of large size and varied odor and color. All the 

 tales of the rarity of flowers in the tropics had not fitted in 

 with our experiences. 



