del Genio, in order to escape the tangle of vegetation that choked the fore- 
shore and the lower reaches of the stream. This hindrance to travel was 
largely the result of the jungle's reclaiming for its own the clearings that 
had been attempted hy settlers or visitors of years gone by. In the Cocos 
Island streams there is never a dearth of water. When it rains, there is 
more t lan ever, and it is usually raining somewhere on the island nearly all 
the time. 
Our advance upstream was much like travelling over the rocky beaches 
of Hood Island, with enough swift running water to keep us from seeing whether 
we were stepping on a rock, its slippery side, or into a hole between 
rocks. As we got higher upstream, the jungle canopy seemed denser; at least, 
t ll6 
it had not been thinned out by the hand of man, and M so /'shaded kkst floor 
beneath was somewhat freer of vegetation and easier to negotiate than the 
stream itself . We were rather glad to desert the stream bed for what we took 
to be "drier" land. This was a pretty thoroughly water-saturated leaf mould, 
l 
at times as slippery as a wet terrazzo floor under smooth ruber soled shoes. 
A 
Indeed, on some o i the steeper slopes (and as I look back over our experiences 
on Cocos, all of the slopes were as steep as could be , and some steeper), the 
ground underfoot was a slick, reddish mud, with a slippery coating of decayed 
vegetation* 
Going up was one thing; coming down another* That other, in more 
places than not, was a slide and slip affair* It was often easier and cer- 
tainly quicker just to sit down and let go. This sliding was a great thing 
as long as we managed to avoid roots, vines, and decaying stumps, or did not 
have a not-altogether—pleasant encounter with a rock that we couldn’t see half 
buried in the forest muck or couldn’t avoid in the speed of our tobogganing 
