In others, where the rains were less able to drain quickly away, were districts of extraordinary fertility.

Here grew the cocoa, vanilla, indigo and aromatic shrubs innumerable, forming thick and tangled jungles, impervious to the foot of man.

Flowers of gorgeous colors bordered these groves, and lofty trees of foliage, altogether strange to Roger, reared their heads above them.
The lad was delighted with the extraordinary richness of color, and the variety of the foliage, but he would have enjoyed it more had it not been for the intense heat of the sun, and the closeness of the air.
They crossed several large streams.

They cut down the great rushes which bordered them and, tying these together in bundles, formed rafts, upon which four or five at a time were ferried over.

Roger learned that the principal road from the coast ran from Cempoalla, a large town near the sea, but that this lay a long distance to the north, and that the route they were traveling ran nearly due west to Tepeaca, and thence northwest to Pueblo, after which the towns lay thickly, all the way to the lake.