Near one of the streams that flowed over the precipice into the lake, grew several species of very tall grasses, with great bushy heads of long silky fibers that adorned and protected their flowers and fruit.  Of these fine strong threads I made a hammock, which I suspended from a strong frame bound together with these tough fibers, placing it a few feet back from the mouth of the cavern.  Thus, I had an excellent bed, and if I should need covering there were plenty of palm-leaves at hand for the purpose.  But in that torrid climate there was little need of extra protection; the air of the cavern was of just that delightful coolness which refreshes but does not chill.

Now, imagine me waking in the morning just as the dawn tinted the rosy east, refreshed with sweet slumbers and rejoicing to behold the light, rocking myself gently in my pretty hammock, and hailing the uprising sun with a merry song,—­and would you not suppose there was one happy man in this great world?

While the day was yet young I would take a bath in the clear, soft water of a little stream near by.  Then, when all was sparkling and bright in my humble house, I would partake with keen appetite of the precious fruits of my unlimited and self-producing garden.

In the neighboring streams were many kinds of fishes, some of which I knew to be very good eating, and I could have caught and eaten as many birds as I wished; but the fruits and nuts were so plentiful, and of so many different sorts, that I cared for, and, indeed, needed, no other kind of food.

Thus, several months passed away, and I was not weary of this paradise.  There was enough to occupy my mind in the examination of the structure and mode of growth of a vast number of species of plants.  Their flowering, their fruitage, and their decay offered a boundless field for thought, and kept up a never-flagging interest.

For the first four months the sun traced his course through the heavens to the north of me; I knew, therefore, that I was almost immediately under the equator.  For several days at the end of the four months, the sun rose directly in the east, passing through the sky in a line dividing it almost exactly into halves north and south.  After that, for six months, I had the great luminary to the south of me.

In all this time there was but little change in the weather.  A short period without rain was the exception.  Otherwise, the mornings and evenings were invariably clear, with a refreshing rain of about two hours’ duration in the middle of the day.  In the afternoon the sun was, of course, away from my cavern, shining upon the opposite side of the mountain of solid rock, which rendered my abode delightfully cool in the greatest heat of the day.  Toward the end of the short dry period, magnificent thunder-showers passed over my domain.  Nothing could be more glorious than these electrical displays of an equatorial sky, as I sat snug and safe within the rocky shelter.  The heaviest shower could not wet me, the water without ran with a swift descent, from the cave, and over the precipice into the lake below.  It was not likely that the lightning would take the trouble to creep in under the rock and there find me out.  And as for the thunder, I was not in the least afraid of it, but gloried in its loud peals and distant reverberations among the encompassing mountains.