"Every one who is fond of reading books of travel in the tropics must know what it is like to long for an hour or two of real life in a virgin forest, or in the boundless expanses of the pampas, or even in the depths of a mangrove swamp. We would willingly put up with mosquitoes and "piums" and poisonous ants, if we could but see that world for ourselves which Darwin and and Wallace and have made almost, but not quite, a reality for us. Charles Kingsley had this ambition all his life, and was able in the end to indulge it. His enthusiastic delight at what he saw in the West Indies made him more than usually eloquent, and his chapter on the "High Woods" marks perhaps the highest point which a traveller's descriptive power can reach."