6 
WANDERINGS IN 
FIRST 
JOURNEY. 
The bush 
rope. 
fig-tree, and its usurping progeny of vines, receiving 
no more succour from their late foster parent, droop 
and perish in their turn. 
A vine called the bush-rope by the wood-cutters, 
on account of its use in hauling out the heaviest 
timber, has a singular appearance in the forests of 
Demerara. Sometimes you see it nearly as thick as 
a man's body, twisted like a corkscrew round the 
tallest trees, and rearing its head high above their 
tops. At other times, three or four of them, like 
strands in a cable, join tree and tree, and branch 
and branch together. Others, descending from on 
high, take root as soon as their extremity touches 
the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays sup¬ 
porting the mainmast of a line of battle ship; while 
others, sending out parallel, oblique, horizontal, and 
perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you in 
mind of what travellers call a matted forest. Often¬ 
times a tree, above a hundred feet high, uprooted by 
the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall by these amazing 
cables of nature; and hence it is that you account 
for the phenomenon of seeing trees, not only vege¬ 
tating, but sending forth vigorous shoots, though 
far from their perpendicular, and their trunks in¬ 
clined to every degree from the meridian to the 
horizon. 
Their heads remain firmly supported by the bush- 
rope ; many of their roots soon refix themselves in 
the earth, and frequently a strong shoot will sprout 
out perpendicularly from near the root of the re¬ 
clined trunk, and in time become a fine tree. No 
