“Well, Mrs. Weldon, you and your companions will see a singular country, which contrasts strangely with the regions of Peru, of Brazil, or of the Argentine Republic.  Its flora and fauna would astonish a naturalist.  Ah! we may say that you have been shipwrecked at a good place, and if we may ever thank chance——­”

“I wish to believe that it is not chance which has led us here, but God, Mr. Harris.”

“God!  Yes!  God!” replied Harris, in the tone of a man who takes little account of providential intervention in the things of this world.

Then, since nobody in the little troop knew either the country or its productions, Harris took a pleasure in naming pleasantly the most curious trees of the forest.

In truth, it was a pity that, in Cousin Benedict’s case, the entomologist was not supplemented by the botanist!  If, up to this time, he had hardly found insects either rare or new, he might have made fine discoveries in botany.  There was, in profusion, vegetation of all heights, the existence of which in the tropical forests of the New World had not been yet ascertained.  Cousin Benedict would certainly have attached his name to some discovery of this kind.  But he did not like botany—­he knew nothing about it.  He even, quite naturally, held flowers in aversion, under the pretext that some of them permit themselves to imprison the insects in their corollas, and poison them with their venomous juices.

At times, the forest became marshy.  They felt under foot quite a network of liquid threads, which would feed the affluents of the little river.  Some of the rills, somewhat large, could only be crossed by choosing fordable places.

On their banks grew tufts of reeds, to which Harris gave the name of papyrus.  He was not mistaken, and those herbaceous plants grew abundantly below the damp banks.

Then, the marsh passed, thickets of trees again covered the narrow routes of the forest.

Harris made Mrs. Weldon and Dick Sand remark some very fine ebony-trees, much larger than the common ebony-tree, which furnish a wood much blacker and much stronger than that of commerce.  Then there were mango-trees, still numerous, though they were rather far from the sea.  A kind of fur of white moss climbed them as far as the branches.  Their thick shade and their delicious fruit made them precious trees, and meanwhile, according to Harris, not a native would dare to propagate the species.  “Whoever plants a mango-tree dies!” Such is the superstitious maxim of the country.

During the second half of this first day of the journey, the little troop, after the midday halt, began to ascend land slightly inclined.  They were not as yet the slopes of the chain of the first plane, but a sort of undulating plateau which connected the plain with the mountain.

There the trees, a little less compact, sometimes clustered in groups, would have rendered the march easier, if the soil had not been invaded by herbaceous plants.  One might believe himself in the jungles of Oriental India.  Vegetation appeared to be less luxuriant than in the lower valley of the little river, but it was still superior to that of the temperate regions of the Old or of the New World.