CHAPTER X. 

 The Terrible. 



Man's connexion with the creation around him 

 occasionally brings him into circumstances of 

 more serious result than a temporary excitement 

 of the imagination, and a thrilling of the nerves, 

 which might be on the whole rather pleasant than 

 otherwise. He was indeed invested with lordship 

 over the inferior creatures, and in general they 

 own his dominion; but many of them are en- 

 dowed with powers for evil, to which he can 

 oppose no effectual resistance; at least, none so 

 invariably effectual, but that occasions occur in 

 which the mastery is reversed. Some are furnished 

 with enormous weight and strength, able to crush 

 him with mere brute momentum; others carry 

 formidable weapons, horns and hoofs, claws and 

 teeth, tusks and fangs, wielded with consummate 

 skill, and made more effective by the aid of muscu- 

 lar strength, fleetness of pace, agility, instinct of 

 combination, or cunning strategy. Others, small 

 and apparently contemptible, are yet armed with 

 implements so terribly lethal, that the slightest 

 puncture of the skin by one of them, darted too 

 with lightning-like rapidity and almost unerring 

 precision, is inevitably and immediately followed 

 by the most horrid form of death. 



And the creatures are conscious of their own 

 powers ; and, though they will often tacitly own 

 man's supremacy by declining a contest with him, 

 yet there are circumstances ever and anon occur- 

 ring, — hunger sometimes, sometimes rage, or the 

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