croggles had long legs and loved locomotion. Moreover, the
woods were exceedingly beautiful and fragrant, and comparatively cool:
for it happened to be the coolest season of the year in that sultry
region, else the party of Europeans could not have ventured to travel
there at all.

Wandering along beneath the shade of palm-trees and large-leaved shrubs
and other tropical productions, with his hands in his breeches pockets,
and whistling a variety of popular airs, which must have not a little
astonished the monkeys and birds and other creatures--such of them, at
least, as had any taste for or knowledge of music--Jim Scroggles
penetrated much farther into the wilds than he had any intention of
doing. There is no saying how far, in his absence of mind, he might
have wandered, had he not been caught and very uncomfortably entangled
in a mesh-work of wild vines and thorny plants that barred his further
progress.

Jim had encountered several such before in his walk, but had forced his
way through without more serious damage than a rent or two in his shirt
and pantaloons, and several severe scratches to his hands and face; but
Scroggles had lived a hard life from infancy, and did not mind
scratches. Now, however, he could not advance a step, and it was only
by much patient labour and by the free use of his clasp-knife, that he
succeeded at length in releasing himself. He left a large portion of
one of the legs of his trousers and several bits of skin on the bushes,
as a memorial of his visit to that spot.

Jim's mind was awoken to the perception of three facts--namely, that he
had made himself late for dinner; that he would be the means of
detaining his party; and that he had lost himself.

Here was a pretty business! Being a man of slow thought and much
deliberation, he sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and looking up,
as men usually do when soliloquising, exclaimed--

"My eye, here's a go! Wot is to be done?"

A very small monkey, with an uncommonly wrinkled and melancholy cast of
visage, which chanced to be seated on a branch hard by, peering down at
the lost mariner, replied--

"O! o-o-o, O! o-o!" as much as to say, "Ah, my boy, that's just the
question."

Jim Scroggles shook his head, partly as a rebuke to the impertinent
little monkey and partly as an indication of the hopelessness of his
being able to return a satisfactory answer to his own question.

At last he started up, exclaiming, "Wotever co