"But the ground is so bare; there are no more creepers, and the trees look as if they were arranged in lines."
"What did you expect to meet with?"
"Plants all entangled together, birds, monkeys, and tigers."
"Your ideal menagerie will, perhaps, make its appearance subsequently. As for the entangled plants, if the whole forest was full of them, it would be absolutely impenetrable. The soil is bare because the trees are so bushy that no rays of the sun can penetrate, and many plants wither and die in the shade; but whenever we come upon a glade, you will find the earth covered with grass and shrubs."
"Then the forests of the Terre-Tempérée are more beautiful than those of the Terre-Chaude?"
"You judge too hastily," replied Sumichrast; "wait till our path leads along the edge of some stream."
"All right," muttered the boy, shaking his head and turning towards his friend; "the woods we have gone through are much more pleasant. It is so silent, and the boughs are so high that we might fancy we were in a church."
The boy's remark was far from incorrect. The dark arches of the intersecting branches, the black soil formed by the accumulated vegetable débris of perhaps five or six thousand years, the dim obscurity scarcely penetrated by the sunlight making its way through the dark foliage—all combined to imbue the mind with a kind of vague melancholy. The limited prospect and the profound silence (for birds rarely venture into this forest-ocean) also tend to fill the soul with gloomy thoughts, and prove that health of mind as well as of body depends upon light.
A furnace-like heat compelled us to keep silence, and tree succeeded tree with sad monotony. The moist soil gave way under our feet, and retained the traces of our footsteps. At a giddy height above our heads the dark foliage of the spreading branches entirely obscured the sky. Every now and then I gave a few words of encouragement to Lucien, who was walking behind me quite overcome with the heat; especially, I recommended him not to drink, in the first place, because the water must be economized, and next because it would only stimulate his thirst.
"Then we shall never drink any more," said the boy.