Up to the present there had been no opportunity for using the sail, for the river had been so shut in by the forest that the air was nearly motionless; but now the great width of the stream allowed a light breeze to steal up from the south. This was a head wind, it is true, but with my leeboards down and the swift current running to windward I could afford to sail very close, and if I gained little in speed, it was more amusing to sail than to drift. So I stepped the mast, bent the halyard on to the yard and hoisted the sail. Even in that gentle breeze the grey, wrinkled sail gave quite an encouraging pull on the sheet; and when I let down one leeboard and sailed the canoe pretty full across the river, I was delighted to see the way in which the floating rubbish slipped past her side. Having made this trial of her speed, I put her as close to the wind as she would go, and tacked to and fro across the river; and thus made nearly as much headway as if I had been working with the paddle. The weather was very pleasant on this morning--the sixth of my solitary voyage; showery, but bright and sunny in the intervals, and as I sat lazily grasping the tiller, I could not but note with admiration the beauty of the scene. On either bank the rich, soft foliage crowded down to the very water’s edge, an impenetrable mass of living green, while the slender trunks and branches of the great trees, snow-white in the sunlight, soaring away above the lesser vegetation, spread abroad their leafy canopies. Fantastic lianas drooped in strange festoons from tree to tree, orchids blossomed on the boughs, ferns nestled in the undergrowth, and at the margin of the river, its form faithfully repeated in the still water under the bank, the oil-palm lifted its plumy head with indescribable loveliness and grace. It was wonderfully beautiful, this exuberant life and warm luxuriance of the forest; but I was tired of it--tired of its silence and gloom, its steamy, humid air, its vastness and its loneliness; and I longed for the hum of human life, the bustle and clamour of men at work, and the familiar voice of the sea. Meditating thus, I tacked my little bark across and across, down the wide reaches by wooded promontories and shady bays, for a couple of hours. And then, as if in obedience to my unspoken wishes, there came a change in the scene. The lofty forest began to recede from the river, and at the water’s edge there appeared scattered clumps of bushes of a colourless sagy green. At first they were few and wide apart, but soon they drew together, creeping out into the shallows and hiding the banks, while the forest retreated farther and farther, until it vanished behind their summits. Then all the beauty of the river was gone, and I looked upon a bare expanse of yellow water, bounded on each side by a low wall of sage-green foliage, monotonous and ugly, but yet to me most welcome. It was the mangrove.