and size and hue; some with stems twenty feet in circumference; others more slender in form, straight and tall; and some twisted in a bunch together and rising upwards like fluted pillars:  a few had buttresses, or natural planks, several feet broad, ranged all round their trunks, as if to support them; while many bent gracefully beneath the load of their clustering fruit and heavy foliage.  Orange-trees with their ripe fruit shone in the sunbeams like gold.  Stately palms rose above the surrounding trees and waved their feathery plumes in the air, and bananas with broad enormous leaves rustled in the breeze and cast a cool shadow on the ground.

Well might they gaze in great surprise; for all these curious and beautiful trees were surrounded by and entwined in the embrace of luxuriant and remarkable climbing plants.  The parasitic vanilla with its star-like blossoms crept up their trunks and along their branches, where it hung in graceful festoons, or drooped back again almost to the ground.  So rich and numerous were these creepers, that in many cases they killed the strong giants whom they embraced so lovingly.  Some of them hung from the tree-tops like stays from the masts of a ship, and many of them mingled their brilliant flowers so closely with the leaves, that the climbing-plants and their supporters could not be distinguished from each other, and it seemed as though the trees themselves had become gigantic flowering shrubs.

Birds, too, were there in myriads,—­and such birds!  Their feathers were green and gold and scarlet and yellow and blue—­fresh and bright and brilliant as the sky beneath which they were nurtured.  The great toucan, with a beak nearly as big as his body, flew clumsily from stem to stem.  The tiny, delicate humming-birds, scarce larger than bees, fluttered from flower to flower and spray to spray, like points of brilliant green.  But they were irritable, passionate little creatures, these lovely things, and quarrelled with each other and fought like very wasps!  Enormous butterflies, with wings of deep metallic blue, shot past or hovered in the air like gleams of light; and green paroquets swooped from tree to tree and chattered joyfully over their morning meal.

Well might they gaze with wonder, and smile too with extreme merriment, for monkeys stared at them from between the leaves with expressions of undisguised amazement, and bounded away shrieking and chattering in consternation, swinging from branch to branch with incredible speed, and not scrupling to use each other’s tails to swing by when occasion offered.  Some were big and red and ugly,—­as ugly as you can possibly imagine, with blue faces and fiercely grinning teeth; others were delicately formed and sad of countenance, as if they were for ever bewailing the loss of near and dear relations, and could by no means come at consolation; and some were small and pretty, with faces no bigger than a halfpenny.  As a general rule, it seemed to Barney, the smaller the monkey the longer the tail.