Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1919 — HALTED AT EDGE OF JUNGLE [ARTICLE]

HALTED AT EDGE OF JUNGLE

Explorer* Forced Jo Cut Pathway to Reach Mighty Tropxal Ocean of Foliage. Here, at the edge of our cleared compound, we were confronted by a tangle. It was not very high—twenty feet or so—but dense and unbroken. Like newly trapped creatures we paced back and forth along it, looking for an opening. It was without a break. We examined it more closely, and saw a multitude of slender, graceful canestems hung with festoons of grass-like drapery. One of us seized a wisp of this climbing grass and pulled downward. ■ When he dropped it. his hand dripped blood. He might as well have run a scroll sfiw over his fingers. The jungle had shown its teeth. We laughed and retreated to the upper flodr for consultation. The sight we saw there decided us. In the distance “not far away," to use the hopelessly indefinite Guiana vernacular, high over the tumbled lower growths, towered the real jungle —the high bush. Thia was the edge of that mighty tropical ocean of foliage, that sea of life with Its surface 100, 200 feet above the earth? stretching unbroken to the Andes; leagues of unknown wofiderland. And . here we were, after thousands of miles of voyaging to study the life of this great jungle, to find our last few yards blocked by a mass of vegetation! There was no dissenting voice. We must cut a trail, and at once, straight to the jungle.—William Beebe, in Atlantic Monthly.