We were now--though I did not know it at the time--close upon the frontier of Colombia, and, I think, for a time our route lay through that little-known country, until we turned eastward again into the territories of the Amazonas.
We were now in a mountainous and savage land, where we could make but the slowest progress. For not only were the hills steep and pathless, but in places clothed in such luxuriant vegetation that we had often to break a way with hatchets for the mules.
We were marching by the map, and Amos had become our guide. He and Forsyth--who never seemed to tire--would lead our little column, myself walking in company of Joshua, and the pack-mules bringing up the rear.
We were soon to bid good-bye to these faithful, dumb companions; for, after we had climbed the slopes of another range of mountains, we followed the course of a river valley that led us rapidly downward, to land us into the very heart of such a forest as I did not dream to be possible.
The mulemen were paid off--by no means too handsomely, I thought--to return upon that long and tedious journey to the coast. And we five went on alone--Amos and his two confederates, Vasco and myself--carrying our stores and provisions in knapsacks on our backs, and all armed as though we were like to meet with savage men.
In the first place, I must tell you that the heat was insufferable, for all this while we had been approaching the equator. The forest swarmed with myriads of stinging insects, and sometimes I saw great tree snakes of a magnitude that even now makes my blood run cold when I think of them. We came upon one, lying half coiled upon the bank of a woodland pool, and I am ready to swear that he was longer than a cricket-pitch, and of a thickness almost equal to my own waist.
But I marvelled most at the forest trees, the names of some of which I learned from Vasco, who had a little English, of which he was exceedingly vain. One of these was a palm-tree, the very leaves of which were forty feet in length, standing almost erect, all bunched together--a magnificent sight to behold. And these forest giants were intertwined and intermingled with thousands of creepers, parasites, and climbers, so that in places, even at mid-day, when the tropic sun was at its height, it was dark as night in the vast Region of the Woods.
For weeks we struggled onward, literally fighting our way through that all but impenetrable wilderness. I saw that Amos had more than he could do to trace our route upon the map; and there were times, I am convinced, when even Vasco and Baverstock himself truly believed that we were lost.
He told us he was looking for a certain landmark; and in that dark and endless forest he might as well have searched for a pin. At one time, there was not a living soul within hundreds of miles of us. There were great alligators in the rivers that we crossed by means of rough dug-out canoes, which we made upon one bank and left upon the other; the jungle teemed with snakes, many of the venomous kind besides the great loathsome pythons, in whose coils an ox might have been crushed to death; thousands of gaily-coloured birds were among the tree-tops high above us, and the dead leaves about our pathway swarmed with little things that crept and crawled and stung so vilely that we were covered from head to foot with painful swellings. But never a sign did we see of any human being. Nature reigned in that black wilderness, untrammelled and supreme.
And then, as one steps on a sudden from a darkened room, we came forth one morning from the forest into the blazing light of the sun. And there was such a wonder as I had never seen before.