in very deed to get into them, would, perchance, not equal, and
certainly could not excel, our own actual world!

Gigantic trees towered upwards till their heads were lost in the
umbrageous canopy, while their stems were clasped by powerful snake-like
creepers, or adorned with flowering parasites. The bushes grew so thick
and tangled that it seemed as if neither man nor beast could penetrate
them--which indeed was the case, as regards man, in many places; yet
here and there unexpected openings permitted the charmed eyes to rest
upon romantic vistas where creepers, convolvuli, and other flowers, of
every shape, hue, and size, hung in festoons and clusters, or carpeted
the ground. Fruit, too, was there in abundance. Everything seemed to
bear fruit. The refreshing and not too luscious prickly pear; the
oukli, an enormous cactus, not unlike the prickly pear but with larger
fruit, whose delightful pulp was of a blood-red colour; the ancoche,
with sweet-tasted pearl-like drops, and many others.

There was plenty of animal life, also, in and around this stream, to
interest the hunters, who were now obliged to exert themselves a little
to make head against the sluggish current. Water-hens were innumerable,
and other wild-fowl flew or paddled about, enjoying, apparently, a most
luxuriant existence, while brown ant-hills were suggestive of
exceedingly busy life below as well as above ground. There are many
kinds of ants out there, some of them very large, others not quite so
large, which, however, make up in vicious wickedness what they lack in
size.

At one bend in the stream they came suddenly on a boa-constrictor which
was swimming across; at another turn they discovered a sight which
caused Lawrence to exclaim--

"There's a breakfast for you, Quashy. What would you say to that?"

"I'd like to hab 'im cooked, massa."

The reference was to an alligator which was crossing the stream a few
yards ahead of them, with a live boa in his jaws. The huge serpent was
about twelve feet long, and wriggled horribly to escape, but the monster
had it fast by the middle. Evidently its doom was fixed.

Several tapirs and a band of grunting peccaries were also seen, but all
these were passed without molestation, for the ambitions of our hunters
that day soared to nothing less than the tiger of the American jungles--
the sneaking, lithe, strong, and much-dreaded jaguar.

Spotted Tiger seemed to have at last become fully aware of