EXCUESIOl^'S BEYOl^D EGA. Chap. YI. 
small boat and one man to disembark from the steamer, 
a distance of 100 yards. ' 
In rambling over my old ground in the forests of the 
neighbourhood, I found great changes had taken place- 
to me, changes for the worse. The mantle of shrubs, 
bushes, and creeping plants which formerly, when the 
suburbs were undisturbed by axe or spade, had been 
left free to arrange itself in rich, full and smooth 
sheets and masses over the forest borders, had been 
nearly all cut away, and troops of labourers were still 
employed cutting ugly muddy roads for carts and 
cattle, through the once clean and lonely woods. 
Houses and mills had been erected on the borders of 
these new roads. The noble forest-trees had been cut 
down, and their naked, half-burnt stems remained in 
the midst of ashes, muddy puddles, and heaps of broken 
branches. I was obliged to hire a negro boy to show 
me the way to my favourite path near Una, which I 
have described in the second chapter of this narrative ; 
the new clearings having quite obliterated the old forest 
roads. Only a few acres of the glorious forest near 
Una now remained in their natural state. On the 
other side of the city near the old road to the rice 
mills, several scores of woodsmen were employed under 
Government, in cutting a broad carriage-road through 
the forest to Maranham, the capital of the neighbouring 
province, distant 250 miles from Para, and this had 
entirely destroyed the solitude of the grand old forest 
path. In the course of a few years, however, a new 
growth of creepers will cover the naked tree-trunks on 
the borders of this new road, and luxuriant shrubs form 
