Beyond Mansue the forest was thick and gloomy. There was little
undergrowth, but a perfect wilderness of climbers clustered round
the trees, twisting in a thousand fantastic windings, and finally
running down to the ground, where they took fresh root and formed
props to the dead tree their embrace had killed. Not a flower was
to be seen, but ferns grew by the roadside in luxuriance. Butterflies
were scarce, but dragonflies darted along like sparks of fire. The
road had the advantage of being shady and cool, but the heavy rain
and traffic had made it everywhere slippery, and in many places
inches deep in mud, while all the efforts of the engineers and
working parties had failed to overcome the swamps.
It was a relief to the party when they emerged from the forests
into the little clearings where villages had once stood, for the
gloom and quiet of the great forest weighed upon the spirits. The
monotonous too too of the doves--not a slow dreamy cooing like that
of the English variety, but a sharp quick note repeated in endless
succession--alone broke the hush. The silence, the apparently
never ending forest, the monotony of rank vegetation, the absence
of a breath of wind to rustle a leaf, were most oppressive, and
the feeling was not lessened by the dampness and heaviness of the
air, and the malarious exhalation and smell of decaying vegetation
arising from the swamps.
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