At every hundred yards or so there were giant trees with smooth gray trunks, as even and regular as marble, and with roots like flying-buttresses, a foot in thickness, and reaching from ten to fifteen feet up from the ground. If these flanges had been covered over, a man on muleback could have taken refuge between them. Some of the trunks of these trees were covered with intricate lace-work of a parasite which twisted in and out, and which looked as though thousands of snakes were crawling over the white surface of the tree; they were so much like snakes that one passed beneath them with an uneasy shrug. Hundreds of orchids clung to the branches of the trees, and from these stouter limbs to the more pliable branches of the palms below white-faced monkeys sprang and swung from tree to tree, running along the branches until they bent with the weight like a trout-rod, and sprang upright again with a sweep and rush as the monkeys leaped off chattering into the depths of the forest. We rode through this enchanted wilderness of wavering sunlight and damp, green shadows for the greater part of the day, and came out finally into a broad, open plain, cut up by little bubbling streams, flashing brilliantly in the sun. It was like an awakening from a strange and beautiful nightmare. [Illustration: IN A CENTRAL-AMERICAN FOREST] In the early part of the afternoon we arrived at another one of the farm-houses belonging to young Dr. Pazo, and at which he and his brother happened to be stopping. We had ridden out of our way there in the hopes of obtaining a few days’ shooting, and the place seemed to promise much sport. The Chamelicon River, filled with fish and alligators, ran within fifty yards of the house; and great forests, in which there were bear and deer and wild-pig, stretched around it and beyond it on every side. The house itself was like almost every other native hut in Honduras. They are all built very much alike, with no attempt at ornamentation within, or landscape-gardening without, although nature has furnished the most beautiful of plants and trees close on every side for just such a purpose. The walls of a Honduranian hut are made of mud packed round a skeleton of interwoven rods; the floor is of the naked earth, and the roof is thatched with the branches of palms. After the house is finished, all of the green stuff growing around and about it is cleared away for fifty yards or so, leaving an open place of bare and barren mud. This is not decorative, but it helps in some measure to keep the insects which cling to every green thing away from the house. A kitchen of similarly interlaced rods and twigs, but without the clay, and covered with just such layers of palm leaves, stands on the bare place near the house, or leans against one side of it. This is where the tortillas are patted and baked, and the rice and beans are boiled, and the raw meat of an occasional goat or pig is hung to dry and smoke over the fire. The oven in the kitchen is