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We passed a torrent of water which is not much lower than the boiling point, and has a most singular appearance as it foams over its rugged bed, sending up clouds of steam, and often concealed by the overhanging herbage of ferns and lycopodia, which here thrive with more luxuriance than elsewhere.
At 11 a.m. we arrived at Gurupa, a small village situated on a rocky bank thirty or forty feet high. Here we landed, and I had an opportunity of rambling in the neighbouring woods, which are intersected by numerous pathways, and carpeted with Lycopodia growing to a height of eight or ten inches, and enlivened by numbers of glossy blue butterflies of the Theclidae or hairstreak family.
Laurels and wild nutmegs, with Henslowia, Itea, etc., were frequent in the forest, with the usual prevalence of parasites, mistleto, epiphytical Orchideae, AEshynanthus, ferns, mosses, and Lycopodia; and on the ground were Rubiaceae, Scitamineae, ferns, Acanthaceae, beautiful balsams, and herbaceous and shrubby nettles.
Large bamboos rather crest the hills than court the deeper shade, and of the latter there is abundance, for the torrents cut a straight, deep, and steep course down the hill flanks: the galleys they traverse are choked with vegetation and bridged by fallen trees, whose trunks are richly clothed with Dendrobium Pierardi and other epiphytical Orchids, with pendulous Lycopodia and many ferns, Hoya, Scitamineae, and similar types of the hottest and dampest climates.
The Locusts, the Crickets, and the Scolopendrae are the last representatives of a very ancient world, of an extinct fauna, of an early creation, whose perverse and unbridled instincts were given free vent, when creation was as yet but dimly outlined, "still making the earliest essays of its organizing forces"; when the primitive Orthoptera, "the obscure forebears of those of to-day, were "sowing the wild oats of a frantic rut, "in the colossal forests of the secondary period; by the borders of the vast lakes, full of crocodiles, and antediluvian marshes, which in Provence were shaded by palms, and strange ferns, and giant Lycopodia, never as yet enlivened by the song of a bird.
One day, having extended my walk further than usual, and followed one of the forest-roads until it became a mere picada, or hunters' track, I came suddenly upon a well-trodden pathway, bordered on each side with Lycopodia of the most elegant shapes, the tips of the fronds stretching almost like tendrils down the little earthy slopes which formed the edge of the path.
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