[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

PORT OLRY AND A “SING-SING” :23

They answer, “All right, you go.” I take a few
steps and wait again. One of them appears in front
of the hut to look for a stick to hang his bundle on,
another cannot find his pipe; still, after a quarter of
an hour, we can really start. The boys sing and
laugh, but as we enter the, forest darkness they
suddenly become quiet, as if the sternness of the
bush oppressed their souls. We talk but little, and
only in undertones. These woods have none of the
happy, sensuous luxuriance which fancy lends to every
tropical forest ; there is a harshness, a selfish struggle
for the first place among the different plants, a deadly
battling for air and light. Giant trees with spreading
crowns suppress everything around, kill every rival
and leave only small and insignificant shrubs alive.
Between them, smaller trees strive for light; on tall,
straight, thin stems they have secured a place and
developed a crown. Others look for light in round-
about ways, making use of every gap their neigh-
bours leave, and rise upward in soft coils. All these
form a high roof, under which younger and weaker
7 plants lead a skimped life—hardwood trees on thin
' trunks, with small, unassuming leaves, and vulgar
. softwood with large, flabby foliage. Around and
across all this wind the parasites, lianas, rotang,
some stretched like ropes from one trunk to another,
some rising in elegant curves from the ground, some
attached to other trunks and sucking out their life
with a thousand roots, others interlaced in the air
in distorted curves. All these grow and thrive on
the bodies of former generations on the damp,