Dark, moist verdure was
close around him, rippling waters below; the tall trees of the jungle
and the low mangroves beneath were all hung with long vines and lianas,
a maze of cordage, like a fleet at anchor; odd monkeys travelled
ceaselessly up and down these airy paths, in armies, bearing their
young, like knapsacks, on their backs; macaws and humming-birds, winged
jewels, flew from tree to tree. As they neared Paramaribo, the river
became a smooth canal among luxuriant plantations, the air was perfumed
music, redolent of orange-blossoms and echoing with the songs of birds
and the sweet plash of oars; gay barges came forth to meet them; "while
groups of naked boys and girls were promiscuously playing and
flouncing, like so many tritons and mermaids, in the water." And when
the troops disembarked,--five hundred fine young men, the oldest not
thirty, all arrayed in new uniforms and bearing orange-flowers in their
caps, a bridal wreath for beautiful Guiana,--it is no wonder that the
Creole ladies were in ecstasy, and the boyish recruits little foresaw
the day, when, reduced to a few dozens, barefooted and ragged as
filibusters, their last survivors would gladly reembark from a country
beside which even Holland looked dry and even Scotland comfortable.
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