woods; about as broad as a Devonshire
lane, here and there crossed by fallen trees; huge trees overhead in the
sun, dripping lianas and tufted with orchids, tree ferns, ferns
depending with air roots from the steep banks, great arums--I had not
skill enough to say if any of them were the edible kind, one of our
staples here!--hundreds of bananas--another staple--and alas! I had
skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that bears no fruit.
My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it was that the bad
banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded and tended; and I
had not the heart to tell him how fortunate they were here, and how
hungry were other lands by comparison. The ascent of this lovely lane of
my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but be reminded of old
Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I came to the tropics;
and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I would have written to
tell him that, for me, _it had come true_; and I thought, forbye, that,
if the great powers go on as they are going, and the Chief Justice
delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch will sound in the
hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is ended.
And all at once--mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot--a strange
thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook about
breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, and--behold, it was a wire!
On either hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where
it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I know no more
than--there it is. A little higher the brook began to trickle, then to
fill. At last, as I meant to do some work upon the homeward trail, it
was time to turn. I did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long
as my endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.

At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by
the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana--a rotten trunk
giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe--if
I dared swing one--would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass.
Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing
out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised my eyes and
looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer pioneering, I had struck
an old track overgrown, and was restoring an old path. So I laboured
till I was in such a