WONDERS OF THE TROPICAL FORESTS, 
be visited, even in tlieir deepest recesses : no tborny bush- 
ropea stretch their intricate cordage before the wanderer ; 
no masses of matted shrubs black up his way. But it is 
very different in the boundless forests of tropical America, 
Here the jaguar sometimes loses himself in such impene- 
trable thickets that, unable to hunt upon the ground, 
he lives for a long time on the trees, a terror to the 
monkeys ; hero the^jj^ff/rsof the mission-stations, which are 
not many miles apart in a direct line, often require more 
than a day's navigation to visit each other, following the 
windings of small rivulets in their conrses, as the forest 
renders communication by land impossible. 
Even the more open parts of tlie forest are full of 
mysteries. In our woods the summits of the highest 
trees are accessible; there is no blossom that we are 
not able to pluck — no plant that we are not able to 
examine, from its root to its topmost branches; but in 
the Brazilian forest, where the matted bush-ropes wind 
round the trunks like immense serpents waiting for their 
prey, or stretch like the rigging of a ship from one 
tree to another, and blossom at a giddy height, it is 
frequently as impossible to reach their tlowers as it is to 
distiiiguisli to which of the many interlacing stems they 
may belong. 
If any one should be inclined to tax this description 
with exaggeration, let him try to pluck the tlowers of the 
lianas, or to ascend by climbing their tiexible cordage. 
The tiger-cat and the monkey, perhaps also the agile 
Indian, may be able to accomplish the feat; but it would 
be utterly hopeless for the European to undertake it. 
Nor is it possible to drag down t hese inaccessible ci-eepers; 
for, owing to their strength and toughness, it would be 
easier to pull down the tree to wdiich they attach them- 
selves than to force them from their hold. Here two 
or three together twisting spirally round each other 
form a complete living cable, as if to bind securely the 
monarchs of the forest ; there they form tangled festoons, 
