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Updated: June 24, 2025
The two men told my father and the skipper that, on being left behind, they had swum to a branch at some distance from where they had been left, and having climbed the tree to which it belonged, had wandered, by means of the sepos interlacing the boughs, some way through the forest, till they reached the tree on which my father and the skipper saw them.
Having all my life lived in the high regions of New Granada, I was not prepared for the perfectly tropical scenery I now for the first time beheld. I remember one spot by the side of the Cauca, just before we reached Cartago. The sepos, or rope-like vines, hung from the lofty branches of the trees, and beautifully-coloured parasitical plants were suspended in the air.
"Yes," he said, "all ready, Massa Guy;" and raising himself from his nest among the sepos, he lowered his floats into the water, and slipped down after them. Wishing my uncle and Tim goodbye, though, as I observed, it would only be for an hour or two, I followed Sambo's example. Just then Uncle Paul cried out to me, "Stop! stop! I hear the Indians coming, and we will all go together."
Arthur said that he was doing the same; but Kallolo appeared to have no apprehensions on the subject. We soon reached a branch almost touching the water. We scrambled on to it, and then without difficulty made good progress, holding on to the hanging sepos amid which we passed.
The dark forest towering above our heads, the flickering flames casting an uncertain light on the giant trunks, and the tracery of sepos or twisting vines, which interlaced the branches and hung down in festoons and ropelike lines to the ground, along which they ran, often assuming the appearance of huge serpents; indeed, more than once, as I paced up and down, I could not help fancying that an anaconda, or boa-constrictor, or rattlesnake was creeping towards us.
We had a number of spectators at our repast; for no sooner were we quietly seated, than troops of monkeys, attracted by the strange spectacle we presented to their eyes, at all events came from every side through the forest, swinging from bough to bough, or scrambling along the sepos, to have a look at us.
There were not, altogether, more than seven main trunks; but numberless sepos interlaced the boughs, and striking downwards, where they had apparently taken root, had again sprung upwards, forming spiral stems, some considerably thicker than a man's body, others as thin as the smallest ropes of a ship's rigging.
Gerald at the same moment fired, and killed the other. I waited till I could take good aim; and, to my great satisfaction, shot the jaguar through the head. Having put an end to the sufferings of the deer the jaguar had seized, we lost no time in dragging them both out of the thicket, and hoisting them up to the bough of a tree with some ever-serviceable sepos.
At the end we had generally to climb up the roots or branches, and make our way along the low boughs, sometimes having to swing ourselves off from one to the other by means of the sepos.
Several besides the fig-trees bore fruit and nuts, affording food to monkeys and other animals, and to various species of birds. One end of the grove was less closely united than the main portion, but still two projecting boughs interlaced, and were joined likewise by chains of sepos, forming an easy communication between the two parts.
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