The contrast was great between the view before and behind me.
Behind lay the road I had achieved, the monotonous, toilsome, wearisome
desert, the dry, formal introduction, as it were, to my coming journey.
Before, long, cool vistas opened green through delicious shades,--a
track seemed to be almost made over the soft grass, that wound in and
out among the trees, and lost itself in interminable mazes. I plunged
into the profound depths of the still forest, and confidently followed
for path the first open space in which I found myself.
It was a strangely still wood for the tropics,--no chattering
parroquets, no screaming magpies, none of the sneering, gibing
dissonances that I had been accustomed to,--all was silent, and yet
intensely living. I fancied that the noble trees took pleasure in
growing, they were so energized with life in every leaf. I noticed
another peculiarity,--there was little underbrush, little of the
luxuriance of vines and creepers, which is so striking in an African
forest. Parasitic life, luxurious idleness, seemed impossible here; the
atmosphere was too sacred, too solemn, for the fantastic ribaldry of
scarlet runners, of flaunting yellow streamers.
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