"Westward Ho!" is a novel written by Rev. Charles Kingsley, and first published in 1855. It is a story of the times of Queen Elizabeth, of the threatened invasion of England by the Spanish Armada, and of wild adventure on the sea and in the forests of the New World. Several historical personages are made to appear in the story, such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Hawkins, and others. The hero is Amyas Leigh, "a Devonshire youth of great bodily strength, of lively affection and sweet temper, combined with a marked propensity to combat from his earliest years." Amyas and his companions had undertaken an expedition to discover the fabled golden city of Manoa, which was said to exist somewhere in the wilds of South America. They had been searching more than three years for this city when they reached the Meta River in canoes, and the following adventure occurred.

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For three hours or more Amyas Leigh and his companions paddled easily up the glassy and windless reaches, between two green flower-bespangled walls of forest, gay with innumerable birds and insects; while down from the branches which overhung the stream, long trailers hung to the water's edge, and seemed admiring in the clear mirror the images of their own gorgeous flowers. River, trees, flowers, birds, insects,—it was all a fairyland; but it was a colossal one; and yet the voyagers took little note of it.

It was now to them an everyday occurrence to see trees full two hundred feet high one mass of yellow or purple blossom to the highest twigs, and every branch and stem one hanging garden of crimson and orange orchids or vanillas. Common to them were all the fantastic and enormous shapes with which Nature bedecks her robes beneath the fierce suns and fattening rains of the tropic forest. Common were forms and colors of bird, and fish, and butterfly, more strange and bright than ever opium eater dreamed.

The long processions of monkeys, who kept pace with them along the tree tops, and proclaimed their wonder in every imaginable whistle and grunt and howl, had ceased to move their laughter, as much as the roar of the jaguar and the rustle of the boa had ceased to move their fear; and when a brilliant green and rose-colored fish, flat-bodied like a bream, flat-finned like a salmon, and sawtoothed like a shark, leaped clean on board of the canoe to escape the rush of a huge alligator (whose loathsome snout, ere he could stop, actually rattled against the canoe), Jack coolly picked up the fish and said:

"He's four pound weight! If you catch fish for us like that, old fellow, just keep in our wake, and we'll give you the cleanings for your wages!"

They paddled onward hour after hour, sheltering themselves as best they could under the shadow of the southern bank, while on their right hand the full sun glare lay upon the enormous wall of mimosas, figs, and laurels, which formed the northern forest, broken by the slender shafts of bamboo tufts, and decked with a thousand gaudy parasites; bank upon bank of gorgeous bloom piled upward to the sky, till where its outline cut the blue, flowers and leaves, too lofty to be distinguished by the eye, formed a broken rainbow of all hues quivering in the ascending streams of azure mist, until they seemed to melt and mingle with the very heavens.

And as the sun rose higher and higher, a great stillness fell upon the forest. The jaguars and the monkeys had hidden themselves in the darkest depths of the woods. The birds' notes died out one by one; the very butterflies ceased their flitting over the tree tops, and slept with outspread wings upon the glossy leaves, undistinguishable from the flowers around them. Now and then a parrot swung and screamed at them from an overhanging bough; or a thirsty monkey slid lazily down a swinging vine to the surface of the stream, dipped up the water in his tiny hand, and started chattering back, as his eyes met those of some foul alligator peering upward through the clear depths below.

In shaded nooks beneath the boughs, rabbits as large as sheep went paddling sleepily round and round, thrusting up their unwieldy heads among the blooms of the blue water lilies; while black and purple water hens ran up and down upon the rafts of floating leaves. The shining snout of a fresh-water dolphin rose slowly to the surface; a jet of spray whirred up; a rainbow hung upon it for a moment; and the black snout sank lazily again.

Here and there, too, upon some shallow pebbly shore, scarlet flamingoes stood dreaming knee-deep on one leg; crested cranes pranced up and down, admiring their own finery; and irises and egrets dipped their bills under water in search of prey; but before noon, even those had slipped away, and there reigned a stillness which might be heard—a stillness in which, as Humboldt says: "If beyond the silence we listen for the faintest undertones, we detect a stifled, continuous hum of insects, which crowd the air close to the earth; a confused swarming murmur which hangs round every bush, in the cracked bark of trees, in the soil undermined by lizards and bees; a voice proclaiming to us that all Nature breathes, that under a thousand different forms life swarms in the gaping and dusty earth, as much as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air which breathes around."

At last a soft and distant murmur, increasing gradually to a heavy roar, announced that they were nearing some cataract; till, turning a point where the alluvial soil rose into a low cliff fringed with delicate ferns, they came in full sight of a scene at which all paused—not with astonishment, but with something very like disgust.

"Rapids again!" grumbled one. "I thought we had had enough of them on the Orinoco!"

"We shall have to get out, and draw the canoes overland, I suppose!"

"There's worse behind; don't you see the spray behind the palms?" "Stop grumbling, my masters, and don't cry out before you are hurt. Paddle right up to the largest of those islands, and let us look about us."

In front of them was a snow-white bar of foam, some ten feet high, along which were ranged three or four islands of black rock. Each was crested with a knot of lofty palms, whose green tops stood out clear against the bright sky, while the lower half of their stems loomed hazy through a luminous veil of rainbowed mist. The banks right and left of the fall were so densely fringed with a low hedge of shrubs that landing seemed almost impossible; and their Indian guide, suddenly looking round him and whispering, bade them beware of savages, and pointed to a canoe which lay swinging in the eddies under the largest island, moored apparently to the root of some tree.

"Silence, all!" cried Amyas, "and paddle up thither and seize the canoe. If there be an Indian on the island, we will have speech of him. But mind, and treat him friendly; and on your lives, neither strike nor shoot, even if he offers to fight."

So, choosing a line of smooth backwater just in the wake of the island, they drove their canoes up by main force, and fastened them safely by the side of the Indian's, while Amyas, always the foremost, sprang boldly on shore, whispering to the Indian boy to follow him.

Once on the island, Amyas felt sure enough that, if its wild tenant had not seen them approach, he certainly had not heard them, so deafening was the noise which filled his brain, and which seemed to make the very leaves upon the bushes quiver and the solid stone beneath his feet reel and ring. For two hundred yards and more above the fall, nothing met his eye but one white waste of raging foam, with here and there a transverse dike of rock, which hurled columns of spray and surges of beaded water high into the air,—strangely contrasting with the still and silent cliffs of green leaves which walled the river right and left, and more strangely still with the knots of enormous palms upon the islets, which reared their polished shafts a hundred feet into the air, straight and upright as masts, while their broad plumes and golden-clustered fruit slept in the sunshine far aloft, the image of the stateliest repose amid the wildest wrath of Nature.

Ten yards farther, the cataract fell sheer in thunder; but a high fern-fringed rock turned its force away from the beach. Here, if anywhere, was the place to find the owner of the canoe. He leaped down upon the pebbles; and as he did so, a figure rose from behind a neighboring rock, and met him face to face. It was an Indian girl.

He spoke first, in some Indian tongue, gently and smilingly, and made a half-step forward; but quick as light she caught up from the ground a bow, and held it fiercely toward him, fitted with the long arrow, with which, as he could see, she had been striking fish, for a line of twisted grass hung from its barbed head. Amyas stopped, laid down his own bow and sword, and made another step in advance, smiling still, and making all Indian signs of amity. But the arrow was still pointed straight at his breast, and he knew the mettle and strength of the forest nymphs well enough to stand still and call for the Indian boy.

The boy, who had been peering from above, leaped down to them in a moment; and began, as the safest method, groveling on his nose upon the pebbles, while he tried two or three dialects, one of which at last she seemed to understand, and answered in a tone of evident suspicion and anger.

"What does she say?"

"That you are a Spaniard and a robber because you have a beard."

"Tell her that we are no Spaniards, but that we hate them, and are come across the great waters to help the Indians to kill them."

The boy had no sooner spoken, than, nimble as a deer, the nymph had sprung up the rocks, and darted between the palm stems to her own canoe. Suddenly she caught sight of the English boats, and stopped with a cry of fear and rage.

"Let her pass!" shouted Amyas, who had followed her closely. "Push your boats off, and let her pass. Boy, tell her to go on; they will not come near her."

But she hesitated still, and with arrow drawn to the head, faced first on the boat's crew, and then on Amyas, till the Englishmen had shoved off full twenty yards.

Then, leaping into her tiny piragua, she darted into the wildest whirl of the eddies, shooting along with vigorous strokes, while the English trembled as they saw the frail bark spinning and leaping amid the muzzles of the alligators and the huge dog-toothed trout. But, with the swiftness of an arrow, she reached the northern bank, drove her canoe among the bushes, and, leaping from it, darted into the bush, and vanished like a dream.

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The chief interest in the foregoing story lies, of course, in its faithful and glowing picture of scenery in the midst of a tropical forest. The learner should read it a second time and try to point out all the passages that are remarkable for their wealth of description. He should try to form in his mind an image of the sights and sounds that he would encounter in a voyage up the Meta River or any other of the tributaries of the Orinoco or the Amazon.