After coasting a short distance to the south, Pizarro effected a landing. It was an inhospitable spot. The explorers found themselves in a vast, tropical swamp, where progress was made almost impossible by the morasses and by the dense growth. The miasma of the marsh brooded everywhere, an intangible but merciless foe. Clouds of venomous insects hung upon them. To think of flies as a danger to life is strange to those who know only the temperate zones; but in some parts of the tropics the insects are more dreadful than wolves. From the swamps the exhausted Spaniards struggled through to a range of hills, whose sharp rocks (lava, very likely) cut their feet to the bone. And there was nothing to cheer them; all was the same hopeless wilderness. They toiled back to their rude brigantine, fainting under the tropic heat, and re-embarked. Taking on wood and water, they pursued their course south. Then came savage storms, which lasted ten days. Hurled about on the waves, their crazy little vessel barely missed falling asunder. Water ran short; and as for food, they had to live on two ears of corn apiece daily. As soon as the weather would permit they put to a landing, but found themselves again in a trackless and impenetrable forest. These strange, vast forests of the tropics (forests as big as the whole of Europe) are Nature's most forbidding side; the pathless sea and the desert plains are not so lonely or so deadly. Gigantic trees, sometimes much more than a hundred feet in circumference, grow thick and tall, their bases buried in eternal gloom, their giant columns interwoven with mighty vines, so that it is no longer a forest but a wall. Every step must be won by the axe. Huge and hideous snakes and great saurians are there; and in the hot, damp air lurks a foe deadlier than python or alligator or viper,--the tropic pestilence.