' Finally, fancy the Squire greatly
enjoying such treatment, and feeling bitterly hurt unless handled after
this fashion. Paddling down stream, we collected for Kew. But the
hopelessness of the task weighs upon the spirits: a square mile of such
flora would take a week. There is a prodigious variety of vegetation, and
the quantity of edible berries, 'fowl's lard,' 'Ashanti-papaw,' and the
Guinea-peach (_Sarcophalus esculentus_) would gladden the heart of a
gorilla. Every larger palm-trunk was a fernery; every dead bole was an
orchidry; and huge fungi, two feet broad, fed upon the remains of their
victims. Climbers, chiefly papilionaceous, and llianas, bigger than the
biggest boa-constrictor, coiled and writhed round the great gloomy trees
which rained their darkness below. In the sunlight were pretty jasmines
(_J. grande_), crotons and lantanas, with marantas, whose broad green
leafage was lined with pink and purple. Deep in shadow lay black miry
sloughs of sickening odour, near which the bed of Father Thames at low
water would be scented with rose-water; and the caverns, formed by the
arching roots of the muddy mangrove, looked haunts fit for crocodile and
behemoth and all manner of unclean, deadly beasts.
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