Doctor Dolittle in the Moon by Hugh Lofting

And so we went forward with Chee-Chee as guide to find the water. Our / actual entrance into that jungle was quite an experience and very / different from merely a distant view of it. The light outside was not / bright; inside the woods it was dimmer still. My only other experience / of jungle life had been in Spidermonkey Island. This was something like / the Spidermonkey forest and yet it was strikingly different.

From the appearance and size of that first tree we had reached, the / Doctor had guessed its age to be very, very great. Here the vegetable / life in general seemed to bear out that idea beyond all question. The / enormous trees with their gigantic trunks looked as though they had been / there since the beginning of time. And there was surprisingly little / decay-a few shed limbs and leaves. That was all. In unkept earthly / forests one saw dead trees everywhere, fallen to the ground or caught / half-way in the crotches of other trees, withered and dry. Not so here. / Every tree looked as though it had stood so and grown in peace for / centuries.