They chose the most intricate paths they could find, and if a tough liana gripped Holman or me around the throat, the fiends found great fun in straining upon the rope till the wire-like creepers gave way.

The white reef with its whiter rim of plunging surf, the swaying palms, the flashing waterfall, the joyous people, straight as Greeks and colored like varnished leather, the bread-fruit tree and the brown orange, the purple splendor of the vine called Bougainvillia, and above all the volcanic mountains, green fringed with huge trees, with tree ferns and palms, the whole tied together into an impenetrable jungle by the long armed lianas.

From the steep summit of the mountain hung the graceful lianas, like a floating drapery, forming magnificent canopies of verdure upon the sides of the rocks.

The trees immediately near the edge of the bay were covered with riotous lianas that looped themselves like pythons from limb to limb, and from whose green masses blazing red flowers appeared at intervals like watchful eyes.

Kermit solved the difficulty by going up along some huge twisted lianas for forty or fifty feet and exploring the upper branches; whereupon down came three other coatis through the branches, one being caught by the dogs and the other two escaping.