PARASITES AND CREEPERS. 
71 
able perpendicular lines, all straining, in fierce competition, towards 
the light roof above ; " and next, of a mist or cloud of greenery, 
extending far above his head, and rising to an unknown height. 
Around his knees, as he seeks to advance, crowd the creeping stems 
and fan-shaped leaves of the niamures;* and when he endeavours to 
extricate himself from these, he is entangled by a string or wire belong- 
ing to some other plant; and a glance above and ai'ound shows him a 
complex apparatus of wires, the slender branches of young trees, and 
the creepers and parasites that twine in and around them, and feed 
upon them, and link them together until they form an almost impene- 
trable network. The only simile that can be applied to it is that of 
the rigging of an immense armada, all intertangled, and floating in wild 
confusion : and through this coil of vegetable cordage the traveller is 
compelled to cut his way with lusty strokes from the axe lie carries in 
his hand. He plunges next into a clump of strong, sedge-like sclerias, 
with leaves three to six feet high, as sharp as double-edged swords ; 
anon he is brought up by a kind of rounded, smooth green pole, lying 
horizontally — which proves to be the leaf-stalk of a young cocorite 
palm,"f* the leaf itself being five-and-twenty feet in length. A blow of 
the hatchet aff'ords a passage ; but immediately the adventurer comes 
upon a "gray, lichen-covered bar," a couple of inches thick, — which 
proves to be entwined with three or four other bai's, and rolls over 
with them in great knots and loops and festoons twenty feet high, 
and stretches right up into the dome of greenery overhead. One of 
them is a liantasse (Schnella excisa) measuring six or eight inches 
across in one direction, and three or four in another, " furbelowed all 
down the middle into regular knots, and looking like a chain-cable 
between two flexible iron bars." At another of the loops, a forester 
accustomed to the scenes and sights around him will leap right 
joyfully ; severing it as far up as he can reach, and again below, some 
three feet down ; then lifting the severed portion on high, he throws 
back his head, and down his thirsty throat pours a pint or more of 
pure cold water. " This hidden treasure is, strange as it may seem," 
says Kingsley, " tlie ascending sap; or rather the ascending pure rain- 
* Carludovica. + Maximiliana Caiibsea 
