202 I N A G U A 



body on a small island in the harbor of the same town literally 

 hacked to pieces by machete blows— because the man belonged 

 to the wrong political party. The Samanas of the world can be 

 counted in the hundreds, they are the mangrove swamps of 

 human existence. 



The trail from perfume to bestiality was only a matter of 

 three links, so it was not surprising that the fourth should carry 

 me back to beauty again. Life is like that— a cosmos of con- 

 trasts. Unpleasantness and kindness exist side by side; loves and 

 dislikes sometimes abound in the same household; the well-fed 

 and the hungry live within a few blocks; donkey carts creak 

 along the same roads that bear streamlined automobiles; jazz 

 and symphonies are produced from identical instruments. 



To my surprise, the mangrove crab did not eat the dismem- 

 bered carcass of its smaller relative, so it was, at least, saved 

 from the stigma of cannibalism. Instead it dropped the crushed 

 body on the sand and stepped daintily away, no longer inter- 

 ested. This action, which was wholly unexpected, rendered the 

 proceeding utterly futile. Why did the mangrove crab fail to 

 make use of the food it had earned? What strange dictate of 

 instinct urged it to commit wanton brutal murder? Did it 

 derive joy in the sheer pleasure of killing? The eternal why 

 again; there must be a reason— or need there? So many events 

 in nature seem beyond explanation, completely wasteful and 

 directionless. The spectacle of migrating robins perishing mis- 

 erably in blizzards into which they prematurely blunder is a 

 common example. Is the force which drives them out of the 

 warm southland directionless or purposely extravagant? Here 

 natural history approaches the realm of metaphysics. 



The fourth link arrived in the body of an American egret, 

 readily identified by its vivid yellow bill and black legs and 

 feet. It did not see me, for after the incident of the Panopeus 



