white, her under-parts rich red brown.  Her breast, and all her upper plumage and long tail, glitter with golden green.  There is light enough in this darkness, it seems.  But now a look again at the plants.  Among the white-flowered Arums are other Arums, stalked and spotted, of which beware; for they are the poisonous Seguine-diable, {139a} the dumb-cane, of which evil tales were told in the days of slavery.  A few drops of its milk, put into the mouth of a refractory slave, or again into the food of a cruel master, could cause swelling, choking, and burning agony for many hours.

Over our heads bend the great arrow leaves and purple leafstalks of the Tanias; {139b} and mingled with them, leaves often larger still:  oval, glossy, bright, ribbed, reflecting from their underside a silver light.  They belong to Arumas; {139c} and from their ribs are woven the Indian baskets and packs.  Above these, again, the Balisiers bend their long leaves, eight or ten feet long apiece; and under the shade of the leaves their gay flower-spikes, like double rows of orange and black birds’ beaks upside down.  Above them, and among them, rise stiff upright shrubs, with pairs of pointed leaves, a foot long some of them, pale green above, and yellow or fawn-coloured beneath.  You may see, by the three longitudinal nerves in each leaf, that they are Melastomas of different kinds—­a sure token they that you are in the Tropics—­a probable token that you are in Tropical America.

And over them, and among them, what a strange variety of foliage:  look at the contrast between the Balisiers and that branch which has thrust itself among them, which you take for a dark copper-coloured fern, so finely divided are its glossy leaves.  It is really a Mimosa—­Bois Mulatre, {139d} as they call it here.  What a contrast again, the huge feathery fronds of the Cocorite palms which stretch right away hither over our heads, twenty and thirty feet in length.  And what is that spot of crimson flame hanging in the darkest spot of all from an under-bough of that low weeping tree?  A flower-head of the Rosa del Monte. {139e} And what is that bright straw-coloured fox’s brush above it, with a brown hood like that of an Arum, brush and hood nigh three feet long each?  Look—­for you require to look more than once, sometimes more than twice—­here, up the stem of that Cocorite, or as much of it as you can see in the thicket.  It is all jagged with the brown butts of its old fallen leaves; and among the butts perch broad-leaved ferns, and fleshy Orchids, and above them, just below the plume of mighty fronds, the yellow fox’s brush, which is its spathe of flower.