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Show IN THE PRil\IEV AL FOREST. 207 primeval forest, or "Urwald," which has of late years been so prodigally bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of the earth, none can claim it, perhaps, so strictly as the region of which we are speaking. The term "Urwald," primitive or primeval forest, as well a Urseit and Urvolk-primitive age, primitive nation-are words of rather indefinite meaning, and, for the most part, of only relative import. If this name is to be given to every wild forest full of a thick growth of trees on which man has never laid a destroying hand, then the phenomenon is one which belongs to many parts of the temperate and cold zones. But if the character of the" Urwald'' is that of a forest so truly impenetrable, that it is impossible to clear with an axe any passage between trees of eight or twelve feet diameter for more than a few paces, then such forests belong exclusively to the tropical regions. Nor is it by any means, as is often supposed in Europe, only the interlacing (( lianes" or climbers which make it impossible to penetrate the forest; the "lianes" often form only a very small portion of the underwood. The chief obstacle is presented by an undergrowth of plants filling up every interval in a zone where all vegetation has a tendency to become ligneous. An impatient desire for the fulfilment of a long-cherished wish may sometimes have led travellers who have only just landed in a tropical country, or perhaps island, to imagine that although still in the immediate vicinity of the sea-shore they had entered the precincts of a primeval forest, or "Urwald," such as I have described as impenetrable. In this they deceived themselves: it is not every tropical forest which is entitled to an appellation which I have scarcely ever used in the narrative of my travels; although I believe that of all investigators of nature now living, Bonpland, Martius, Poppig, Robert and Richard Schomburgk, and myself, are those who have spent the longest period of time in primeval forests in the interior of a great continent. Rich as is the Spanish language (as I have already remarked), in appellations of distinct and definite meaning in the description of nature, yet the same word ((Monte" is employed for mountain and forest, for cerro (montana), and for selva. In an inquiry into the true breadth and greatest easterly extension of the chain of the Andes, I have showed how this twofold signification of the |