270 MY LIFE 



beauty of tropical vegetation, and of the strange forms and 

 brilliant colours of the animal world, that I had wrought 

 myself up to a fever-heat of expectation, and it is not to be 

 wondered at that my early impressions were those of disap- 

 pointment. On my first walk into the forest I looked about, 

 expecting to see monkeys as plentiful as at the Zoological 

 Gardens, with humming-birds and parrots in profusion. But 

 for several days I did not see a single monkey, and hardly a 

 bird of any kind, and I began to think that these and other 

 productions of the South American forests are much scarcer 

 than they are represented to be by travellers. But I soon 

 found that these creatures were plentiful enough when I knew 

 where and how to look for them, and that the number of 

 different kinds of all the groups of animals is wonderfully 

 great. The special interest of this country to the naturalist 

 is, that while there appears at first to be so few of the higher 

 forms of life, there is in reality an inexhaustible variety of 

 almost all animals. I almost think that in a single walk you 

 may sometimes see more quadrupeds, birds, and even some 

 groups of insects in England than here. But when seeking 

 after them day after day, the immense variety of strange 

 forms and beautiful colours is really astonishing. There are, 

 for instance, few places in England where during one summer 

 more than thirty different kinds of butterflies can be collected ; 

 but here, in about two months, we obtained more than four 

 hundred distinct species, many of extraordinary size, or of 

 the most brilliant colours. 



" There is, however, one natural feature of this country, the 

 interest and grandeur of which may be fully appreciated in a 

 single walk : it is the ' virgin forest.' Here no one who has 

 any feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be 

 disappointed; the sombre shade, scarce illumined by a single 

 direct ray even of the tropical sun, the enormous size and 

 height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a 

 hundred feet or more without throwing out a single branch, 

 the strange buttresses around the base of some, the spiny or 

 furrowed stems of others, the curious and even extraordinary 

 creepers and climbers which wind around them, hanging in 



