round. The stream was getting smaller and smaller.

Dicky said, 'This can't be the way. I expect there was a turning to
the North Pole inside the tunnel, only we missed it. It was cold enough
there.'

But here a twist in the stream brought us out from the bushes, and
Oswald said--

'Here is strange, wild, tropical vegetation in the richest profusion.
Such blossoms as these never opened in a frigid what's-its-name.'

It was indeed true. We had come out into a sort of marshy, swampy place
like I think, a jungle is, that the stream ran through, and it was
simply crammed with queer plants, and flowers we never saw before or
since. And the stream was quite thin. It was torridly hot, and softish
to walk on. There were rushes and reeds and small willows, and it was
all tangled over with different sorts of grasses--and pools here and
there. We saw no wild beasts, but there were more different kinds of
wild flies and beetles than you could believe anybody could bear, and
dragon-flies and gnats. The girls picked a lot of flowers. I know the
names of some of them, but I will not tell you them because this is
not meant to be instructing. So I will only name meadow-sweet, yarrow,
loose-strife, lady's bed-straw and willow herb--both the larger and the
lesser.

Everyone now wished to go home. It was much hotter there than in natural
fields. It made you want to tear all your clothes off and play at
savages, instead of keeping respectable in your boots.

But we had to bear the boots because it was so brambly.

It was Oswald who showed the others how flat it would be to go home the
same way we came; and he pointed out the telegraph wires in the distance
and said--

'There must be a road there, let's make for it,' which was quite a
simple and ordinary thing to say, and he does not ask for any credit for
it. So we sloshed along, scratching our legs with the brambles, and the
water squelched in our boots, and Alice's blue muslin frock was torn all
over in those crisscross tears which are considered so hard to darn.

We did not follow the stream any more. It was only a trickle now, so we
knew we had tracked it to its source. And we got hotter and hotter and
hotter, and the dews of agony stood in beads on our brows and rolled
down our noses and off our chins. And the flies buzzed, and the gnats
stung, and Oswald bravely sought to keep up Dicky's courage, when he
tripped on a snag and came down on a bramble bush, by saying--

'You