The Argosy — page 324: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

304 Dodging a Shark. Marche ceca.” After dinner we lit our pipes, and reclining upon the green and leafy sward, I mused on my situation. Nothing, perhaps, could be more romantic. ‘The scene was a wild one; and, as I gazed into the dark and solemn forests, that stretched for hundreds of miles along the coast, and extended an unknown distance into the interior, I felt my heart dilate, and my pulse beat strong, as I thought of their mystenous depth, vast extent, and the immense variety of animal and vegetable life they contained. Nothing strikes a European more forcibly when he first sees a tro- pical forest than the gigantic growth of its vegetable productions. But what, after a time, surprises him more than anything, is to find himself living, as it were, In a perpetual spring, with a continuous and never-ending harvest. It is not only surprising to him that Nature is able to sustain such immense, and, it would almost appear, prodigal demands upon her vital energies—producing, as she does, the most beautiful things, in the most wonderful profusion ; but that she does this unaided by man, almost without ‘intermission, and without any appearance of exhaustion or decadence of power. To my mind, there is no part of the world which gives the traveller a grander idea of nature than Central America. No one who has ever seen her glorious forests, her picturesque streams, and her forest-clad, cloud-capped mountains, has ever come back disappointed. As far as I am individually concerned, I can say truly, that a week of the life one is obliged to adopt in the bush is worth years of ordinary existence. In the evening we embarked, taking, in addition to our load of npe nuts, a number of unripe ones, or, as they are called, jelly-nuts. With regard to these, the fluid they contain is the most delicious drink I ever came across, particularly if you add to the liqvor a dash of old rum. It is the more pleasant on account of its coolness, for even if the nuts are picked in the heat of the day, the fluid is as cold as though it had been iced. How Peter and I revelled in this cocoa-nut sangaree ; how we laughed at the dangers we had so narrowly escaped ; or how many pipes we smoked, the reader must not expect to know. All I shall say with regard to our returh is, that with a fair breeze, after camping for the night in Port Sal, we reached the ship in safety the next afternoon. comicloooks (CO) 7m