There was a storm during the night, but the sky had cleared by the time the troops started in the morning.
They now entered a very different country.

It was the belt of forest, three hundred miles wide, which ran across the whole country.

Great as had been the heat, the day before, the gloom of the forest was more trying to the nerves.

Except where the road had been cleared, the advance was impeded by the thick undergrowth of bush and small trees, through which it was impossible to pass without cutting a path with a sword.

Above the bush towered the giants of the forest--great cotton trees, thirty or forty feet in circumference, and rising to the height of from two to three hundred feet.