The brooklet, muddy with last night’s rain, is dammed and bridged by winding roots, in shape like the jointed wooden snakes which we used to play with as children. They belong probably to a fig, whose trunk is somewhere up in the green cloud. Sit down on one, and look, around and aloft. From the soil to the sky, which peeps through here and there, the air is packed with green leaves of every imaginable hue and shape. Round our feet are Arums, with snow-white spadixes and hoods, one instance among many here of brilliant color developing itself in deep shade. But is the darkness of the forest actually as great as it seems? Or are our eyes, accustomed to the blaze outside, unable to expand rapidly enough, and so liable to mistake for darkness air really full of light reflected downward, again and again, at every angle, from the glossy surfaces of a million leaves? At least we may be excused; for a bat has made the same mistake, and flits past us at noonday. And there is another--no; as it turns, a blaze of metallic azure off the upper side of the wings proves this one to be no bat, but a Morpho--a moth as big as a bat. And what was that second larger flash of golden green, which dashed at the moth and back to yonder branch not ten feet off? A Jacamar--kingfisher, as they miscall her here, sitting, fearless of man, with the moth in her long beak. Her throat is snowy white, her under parts rich red brown. Her breast and all her upper plumage and long tail glitter with golden green. There is light enough in this darkness, it seems. But now look again at the plants. Among the white flowered Arums are other Arums, stalked and spotted, of which beware; for they are the poisonous Seguine-diable, the dumb-cane, of which evil tales were told in the days of slavery. A few drops of its milk, put into the mouth of a refractory slave, or again into the food of a cruel master, could cause swelling, choking, and burning agony for many hours. Over our heads bend the great arrow leaves and purple leaf-stalks of the Tanias; and mingled with them leaves often larger still: oval, glossy, bright, ribbed, reflecting from their under side a silver light. They belong to Arumas; and from their ribs are woven the Indian baskets and packs. Above these, again, the Balisiers bend their long leaves, eight or ten feet long apiece; and under the shade of the leaves their gay flower-spikes, like double rows of orange and black birds’ beaks upside down. Above them, and among them, rise stiff, upright shrubs, with pairs of pointed leaves, a foot long some of them, pale green above, and yellow or fawn-colored beneath. You may see, by the three longitudinal nerves in each leaf, that they are Melastomas of different kinds--a sure token that you are in the tropics--a probable token that you are in tropical America.