Here is a world where no one ever need cry for more; there is too much already. After a few days of it one longs to get out in the open, to see a barren spot somewhere just to rest the surfeited soul a bit. It's all for the asking; in fact, there is no chance to ask; it is poured out of the horn of nature's plenty, and all the color and charm and fantasy and music and laughter and glory of it are piled in wild profusion a hundred feet high, and you cannot get away if you will. Nature at least has a chance to show what she can really do, and it is yours for the looking.
What makes up a jungle? Well, that's hard to say. There are mighty trees of cedar and mahogany and a hundred lesser breeds, lifting their heads into the tropic sky. There are palms and giant ferns of course. There are wonderful purple and magenta and crimson-topped trees, whose glaring flat colors fairly shriek at you like the bedlam of a paint box let loose on the sky. Sturdy lignum vitæ trees stand conscious of their high value and rare qualities. Ferns in profusion, vast, variegated and immense, line the banks of streams and hide in the shadows of the great trees. Orchids, of course, winding streams strewn with the flowers and foliage of the dense mass overhead, entrancing water streets and winding Venetian tunnels through forests so thick that the sun never penetrates the shadowed fastnesses below. There are paraqueets, parrots, singing canaries, alligators, bananas, bamboos, singing winds, warbling bluebirds, blackbirds that can render a tune, purples and blues and crimsons and browns, all poured out and mixed together without stint. It is fascinating for a few hours, but after a time you get overloaded and are ready to cry "Enough." It's great, but a little stupefying till one gets used to it.
CACAO PODS
The jungle of the mountains is essentially different from and more interesting than that of the level swamps. Both are largely uninhabited, for men naturally like to have a little outlook both for their lives and about their habitations.
But the growth is about equally dense, provided the soil and moisture are right for the production of real jungle. From Puerto Limon to Almirante is about one hundred and twenty miles overland, and there was a time when practically every mile of this distance was untouched jungle. The United Fruit Company has conquered most of it, until there is now but a day's journey on horseback through the connecting link between the two railroad terminal points at Estrella and the Talamanca Valley. The one hundred miles of rails run almost entirely through the endless fields of bananas. But once this was all primitive wilderness; that is, we think it was, but some of the superintendents of this clearing and planting work say that they have discovered numerous evidences that there was a time in ages past when practically all of this vast area was under some sort of cultivation.
There would be a railroad now across the gap of twenty miles but for the fact that this gap includes a mountain range with rushing rivers and steeps, gorges and almost impenetrable forests. Occasional travelers cross this range by the aid of sturdy mules, but there is yet nothing that could by any strain of language be called a trail. There is simply a "blaze" through the forest and occasional marks where some floundering traveler has preceded the venturesome explorer through the depths of some yawning mudhole.
I crossed this range on a day when the sun was shining overhead, but only two or three times did its rays fall upon the "trail." The overhead growth was so thick that there was nothing but dense shadow below. A hundred and fifty feet these immense trees rose into the air, carrying upward with them festoons of hanging vines, swinging rattan, and clinging orchids. Curious enough are some of these trees, with their winding external buttresses and thin flanges thrown out to brace against the winds. Banyan trees reach out their long arms and drop their fingers down into the soil and take root and continue until the tree literally "stalks" its way across the mountain side. There are rubber trees and cedar trees and mahogany trees and prickly poisoned trees that are the terror of the natives, and trees bearing all manner of jungle fruits and flowers and swarming with chattering birds and creeping things. Rattan "ropes" an inch in diameter and two hundred feet long trip the unwary traveler, and it is useless to try to break them. They are like steel cables. Wild birds are plentiful, occasional baboons bark and bray, and the mountain streams splash and plunge their way through the ferns and flowers. The Estrella River forms the highway for several miles, and its rocky torrent must be forded a score of times.
He who has never tried to travel this "road" has a new experience in store. There are hillsides that are all but perpendicular, which would not be so bad, but they are a mixture of clay and soapstone and moisture, and it is practically impossible to stand erect without holding on to nearby saplings. How a laden mule can navigate such a causeway of destruction is a mystery to be explained only by people who understand mules. And I rode a mule whose mastery of the art of trail-navigation left nothing to be learned. In the ignorance of my novitiate I alighted before the first precipitous descent to which we came. The mule, with the conservatism born of experience, took his time to make the descent, and I essayed to go before and show him how to do it. He watched me with intense interest, while I gingerly approached the edge of the slippery declivity and started down. As a descent it was a complete success. At the second step I slipped on the wet clay and went rolling and coasting to the bottom, whither I arrived in record time, plastered from head to foot with the raw material of which pottery is made. I struggled to my feet and looked up at the mule. He still regarded me intently, and I think that he winked, at least his ear did. Then he deliberately put his front feet over the edge, gathered in his hind feet, and with all fours together, sat down and gracefully slid to the bottom of the hill. He arrived right side up at the bottom, munching a mouthful of grass, which he seized in passing on the way down, and turned to look at me with an expression that needed no interpreter. And I took the hint and stayed on his back most of the day.
After a solid day of this dense growth where we could not see more than a stone's throw at any time it was with a distinct sense of relief that we caught sight of daylight at last through an opening ahead and came upon the fringes of the Talamanca plantation.