388 Guatemala Forests. 
also other trees and shrubs and flowers, the last mostly at the top 
of precipices, the sides of waterfalls, or wherever the sun can get 
to the ground. 
In tropical woods there is not such a profusion of beautiful 
flowers as in the colder climates; they are too meek and lowly, can 
get no sun, and are choked out. I have noticed that where trees 
can get no hold, as on precipices, the rocky banks of rivers, or on 
narrow promontories jutting into lakes, a great variety of flowers 
occur ; also in abandoned mountain meadows, where the ancient 
people cleared the forests away, I have noticed ranunculi, violets, 
geraniums, fuchsias, begonias, composite, lilies, hortleb y,a utilon 
malvas, the wild dahlia, and a host of others.? This general shut- 
ting out of the sun from the ground accounts not only for the lack 
of wild flowers, but also for the striking abundance of twining and 
climbing plants. On the higher volcanic slopes are many vines, 
and among others a blackberry and a tomato that go straight up to 
the tops of the highest trees before they branch out and spread their 
leaves to the sun. The way to gather berries of both is to cut 
down the trees, and when a tree falle the Indians run to where the 
tree-tops land, to get the berries. 
At places where large wet surfaces of lava have no covering of 
soil, they are carpeted over with thick beds of mosses and ferns. 
In descending the volcano Tacan4, when I first came to such an 
open place without knowing its character, I began to slide with 
the green carpet, and, there being no bushes to take hold of, kept 
on at a dangerous pace until a fallen trunk stopped the avalanche. 
The trade winds from the Caribbean Sea bring such abundance of 
- moisture that all summits and slopes exposed to them are inces- 
santly enveloped in mists, and the woods are dripping as with rain. 
These are also the regions of heaviest rainfall during the rainy 
season. Owing to this excessive moisture one finds the great tree- 
fern growing at exceptional altitudes, at 9000 feet and over, above 
the sea. They attain a height of twenty to thirty feet, and a diame- 
ter of trunk of even one foot, and occur in greatest abundance on the 
north slopes of the volcano Tacan4. 
From 11,000 to 8000 feet is truly the forest region, characterized 
by great variety and heavy growth. There are many hard woods, of 
1 But orchids, epiphytes and other flowers, as well as ferns, mosses 
and lichens whose habitat is on trees, abound universally throughout 
the forests and at all elevations, but varying im speeies. 
