me; but, I was able to stand on my feet now and
work my limbs more freely than I could on first landing, which was
decidedly a point to the good, as I had thought I was paralysed.

"Looking about me, I noticed that I had managed to fetch a low curving
bay or arm of the sea considerably to the south of Cape Tangan, which I
could recognise stretching away to the northward. The shore was of fine
white sand; and in the background was a dense bush of jungle and forest
trees, principally palms and such like tall upright trunks, that had no
branches, all their foliage being on the top in a cluster like a lady's
parasol.

"My two cocoa-nut trees were evidently the outlying sentinels, or
advance-guards of these; for they stood alone on the beach a hundred
yards or more in front of the jungle and brushwood, which extended back
from the shore in a mass of green that stood well out, in pleasant
relief to the gleaming sand, as far away as the eye could reach,
clothing the slopes of the high mountains which rose up in the centre of
the island running like a backbone or rocky spine all along its length
from its extreme nor'-easterly point down far away to the south.

"This forest belt of green encircles the whole coast of Madagascar, I've
been told, beginning close almost to the water's edge in some places and
extending back inland until the higher levels are reached; and it is of
a uniform width of some fifteen miles across, except where, of course,
it has been cleared away at the different settlements and colonies at
the heads of the various bays with which the coast is indented. I know,
at all events, that this jungle seemed endless and impenetrable; for I
had quite enough to do with it in the following ten days that I was thus
brought face to face with it, as I can tell you!

"As soon as I woke up, the first thought that crossed my mind was, where
could I find water? I was so parched with thirst that my tongue seemed
glued to the roof of my palate, and I believe it was feeling this that
roused me; so, naturally, I turned about, hunting for some brook or
streamlet where I could get a drink, as rivers mostly run to the shores
of the majority of islands I ever heard of. However, there were none
close in sight that I could see from the beach, and all the water there
was salt; and, as I argued to myself that all the green jungle must have
been produced and kept alive by moisture of some sort, I abandoned the
sea-shore as hopeles