But here is a pine forest in the Eastern hemisphere.

These woods are vast and lonely.  The ground is torn up by torrents, for it is a mountainous district, and the branches have been torn and broken by many a storm.  It is not a pleasant place for those who love cheerful scenery, and moreover, it is not so safe to ramble here as in our own woods at home.  Companies of bandits inhabit many of these forests, especially those that stretch over the mountainous portions of Italy.  It seems strange that in this enlightened era and in one of the civilized countries of Europe, bandits should still exist to terrify the traveller; but so it is.

Let us get out of this pine forest, so gloomy and perhaps so dangerous.

Here, now, is a very different place.  This is a forest in the tropics.  You will not be likely to meet with bandits here.  In fact, it is very improbable indeed that you will meet with any one.  There are vast portions of these woods which have never been trodden by the foot of man, and which you can never see unless you cut your way, hatchet in hand, among the thick undergrowth and the interlacing vines.

[Illustration]

Here are ferns as large as trees—­great masses of flowers that seem as if a whole garden had been emptied down before us—­vast wildernesses of green, which we know extend for miles and miles, and which, although apparently so thick and impenetrable, are full of all kinds of life, vegetable and animal.  The trees are enormous, but many of them are so covered with vines and creepers that we can scarcely distinguish the massive trunks and luxuriant foliage.  Every color is here, rich green, royal purple, red, yellow, lilac, brown, and gray.  The vines, which overrun everything, are filled with gorgeous flowers, and hang from the branches in the most graceful forms.  Monkeys chatter among the trees, beautiful parrots fly from limb to limb, butterflies of the most gorgeous hues flutter about the grass-tops and the leaves near the ground, and on every log and trunk are myriads of insects, lizards and little living things of endless varieties, all strange and wonderful to us.

[Illustration]

In some parts of this interminable forest, where the light breaks through the foliage, we see suspended from the trees the wonderful air-plants or orchids.  They seem like hanging-baskets of flowers, and are far more beautiful and luxuriant than anything of the kind that we have in our hothouses at home.

But we shall not find it easy to walk through all these beauties.  As I said before, we shall often be obliged to cut a path with our hatchets, and even then we may be unable to penetrate very far into this jungle of beauties.  The natives of these countries, when they are compelled to pass through these dense forests, often take to the small streams and wade along in the water, which is sometimes up to their shoulders, occasionally finding shallower places, or a little space on the banks where they can pick their way along for a few hundred yards before they are obliged to take to the stream again.