Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/480

464 painful, but he does not mind that; the more excruciating the torture the better the charm is working. Next day he goes forth into the forest with renewed confidence, and is likely to be more successful on that account alone.

However, we are wandering away from our subject, and must return to the traces of man's presence in the forest. If the little spot on the sand hill has been recently abandoned, a dark patch of humus shows where the benab or hut once stood, and this will be covered with prickly solanums and other weeds, from which the bare white sand in the neighborhood is entirely free. Sometimes narrow paths into the forest or down to the creek can still be discerned by the careful observer, even after very long periods, as the comparatively barren san^ reef does not obliterate every trace so quickly as does the forest. It may be possible even to find the way to what was once the cassava field—now either an impenetrable jungle or apparently virgin forest. It winds through and under the trees, where a little light has been able to penetrate, obstructed by young trees or crossed by bush-ropes, but fairly conspicuous in the darker arcades. If you succeed in finding the field, and it has been abandoned for only two or three years, the jungle is impenetrable; while after twenty, except for the absence of very large trees, it is unrecognizable.

The plants we have mentioned as indicators of man's presence at some former period are never found truly wild in the forest. They have been—we were going to say cultivated, but that would be a misstatement—grown by the Indians for ages, and are now so thoroughly naturalized as to exist apart from his presence. If the top of a pineapple is thrown down beside the path, it will be sure to grow if there is sufficient light and the soil is porous. It thus becomes an indicator of old tracks over the sand reefs, and will sometimes enable the lost wanderer to retrace his footsteps. Even the forest itself is intersected with tracks which often lead the hunter astray, and give him great trouble to find the right way on his return. Some are almost effaced, others conspicuous for a short distance, and then blocked by some great tree. The path is older than the tree, and yet can be discerned in certain lights, although easily missed when looked for from a different point. Even in returning by the same track the difference in direction will often cause hesitation and doubt.

The ground in the forest is undulating, and if we follow an old track it is always obliterated in the gullies, but may be recovered on the opposite slope. Creeks and small watercourses cross it, or perhaps it stops entirely at the little stream where formerly the Indian embarked in his canoe to reach the great river. No canoe can pass now, and perhaps there is not in existence a single descendant of his tribe. Yet the track is visible.