134 



THE COMBAT. 



Who could sustain the thunderous flash without reeling and without 

 terror ? 



Just, indeed, and legitimate, is the 

 traveller's hesitancy at the entrance of 

 these fearful forests where Tropical Nature, 

 under forms oftentimes of great beauty, 

 wages her keenest strife. It is the place 

 to pause when one knows that the most 

 formidable defence of the Spanish fortresses 

 is found in a simple grove of cactus, which, 

 planted around them, speedily swarms with 

 serpents. You frequently detect there a 

 strong odour of musk, a nauseous, a sinister 

 odour. It tells you that you are treading 

 on the very dust of the dead : the wreck 

 of animals which possessed that peculiar 

 savour, tiger-cats, and crocodiles, vultures, 

 vipers, and rattle-snakes. 



The peril is greatest, perhaps, in those 

 virgin-forests where everything is eloquent 

 f lif e > wner e nature's seething crucible 

 eternally boils and bubbles. 



Here and there their living shadows 

 thicken with a threefold canopy the 

 colossal trees, the entwining and interlacing 

 lianas, and herbs of thirty feet high with 

 magnificent leaves. At intervals, these 

 herbs sink into the ancient primeval slime ; 

 while, at the height of a hundred feet, the 

 lofty and puissant flowers break through 

 the deep night to display themselves in 

 the burning sun. 



In the clearances the narrow alleys where his rays penetrate 

 there is a scintillation, an eternal murmuring, of beetles, butterflies, 



