We proved to be much farther below than I thought for, enough time elapsing for my clothes to get nearly dry in the patches of hot sun we passed as we wound our way through the forest, the rushing noise of the river on our right guiding us in our efforts to keep within range of the bank, which we avoided on account of the huge beasts we had seen basking there.
“This is a rum sort of country and no mistake, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom at last, as he stood mopping the perspiration from his face; “but, somehow or other, one feels just the same here as one did in the old place, and I’m as hungry now as if I hadn’t had a morsel to eat for a week. Is it much farther, Mas’r Harry?”
“I don’t know how many miles we’ve come,” I replied.
But his words had fully accounted for a strange sensation of faintness that troubled me. A little more perseverance, though, brought us to the track—one that we might have reached in a quarter of the time had we known the way.
A short walk showed us that we were correct, for we went along the track to the river, so as to make sure of this being the one we sought—for being lost in these wilds was something not to be thought of for a minute. There, though, on the other side of the stream, was the landing-place from which we had started, only to reach our present position after a roundabout eventful journey.
“All right, Mas’r Harry—come along,” said Tom, turning.
And now, pursuing the track, we found that we were gradually mounting a slope, till the trees were left behind and we stood upon an eminence looking down upon my uncle’s house.
All that we had seen beautiful before seemed to fail before the picture upon which we now gazed, where all that was lavish in nature had been aided by the hand of man, cultivation subduing and enriching, till the region below us blushed in beauty; for we were looking down upon a lightly-built, pleasantly-shaded house, with its green jalousie-covered windows, and great creeper-burdened verandah, gaily-painted, and running right round the house.
The place stood in the midst of a grove of verdure of the most glorious golden-green, rich with the great crimson, coral-like blossoms of what is there called madre del cacao—the cocoa’s mother—tall, regularly planted trees, cultivated for the protection and shade they give to the plants beneath, great bananas loaded with fruit, bright green coffee bushes, and the cocoa with its pods, green, yellow, blood-red, and purple. The roughly erected fences were, so to speak, smothered with glorious trumpet-blossomed convolvuli, whose bright hues were peering ever from a bed of heart and spear shaped richly green leaves.