I see that in travelling with
natives it is essential to have a definite plan of action in one's
own mind, and to verge on self-assertion in carrying it out. We
fought our way a little further, and then he went out of sight
altogether in the jungle, his horse having floundered up to his
girths in soft ground, on which we dismounted and tethered the
horses. H. had never been any further, and as I failed to make him
understand that I desired to visit the home of the five cascades, I
had to reverse our positions and act as guide. We crept along the
side of a torrent among exquisite trees, moss, and ferns, till we
came to a place where it divided. There were three horses tethered
there, some wearing apparel lying on the rocks, and some human
footprints along one of the streams, which decided me in favour of
the other. H. remonstrated by signs, as doubtless he espied an
opportunity for much gossip in the other direction, but on my
appearing persistent, he again laughed and followed me.
From this point it was one perfect, rapturous, intoxicating, supreme
vision of beauty, and I felt, as I now believe, that at last I had
reached a scene on which foreign eyes had never looked. The glories
of the tropical forest closed us in with their depth, colour, and
redundancy.
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