seven
in the morning
Occasional brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped banks gurgled down the shallow gorges in the hill , and offered good camping-grounds every evening on the banks of some rock-studded pool , where swarms of little blue-backed fish , about the size and shape of English trout , gave us a delicious supper . On the ninth day after leaving the canoes , having done , as I reckon , about a hundred and twenty miles , we began to emerge from the trees , which had grown smaller until they were mere shrubs . Their place was taken by an immense wilderness of bamboo , which grew so thickly that we could only penetrate it by cutting a pathway with the machetes and billhooks of the Indians . It took us a long day , traveling from seven in the morning till eight at night , with only two breaks of one hour each , to get through this obstacle . Anything more monotonous and wearying could not be imagined , for , even at the most open places , I could not see more than ten or twelve yards , while usually my vision was limited to the back of Lord John 's cotton jacket in front of me , and to the yellow wall within a foot of me on either side . From above came one thin knife-edge of sunshine , and fifteen feet over our heads one saw the tops of the reeds swaying against the deep blue sky . I do not know what kind of creatures inhabit such a thicket , but several times we heard the plunging of large , heavy animals quite close to us .