CHAPTER VI. 



THE WAR WITH NATURE. 



DURING my sojourn on the Rio Negro letters and 

 papers reached me only at rare intervals. On one 

 occasion I passed very nearly two months without 

 seeing a newspaper. I remember, when at the end 

 of that time one was put before me, I snatched it 

 up eagerly, and began hastily scanning the columns, 

 or column-headings rather, in search of startling 

 items from abroad, and that after a couple of minutes 

 I laid it down again to listen to someone talking in 

 the room, and that I eventually left the place with- 

 out reading the paper at all. I suppose I snatched 

 it up at first mechanically, just as a cat, even when 

 not hungry, pounces on a mouse it sees scuttling 

 across its path. It was simply the survival of an 

 old habit a trick played by unconscious memory on 

 the intellect, like the action of the person who has 

 resided all his life in a hovel, and who, on entering 

 a cathedral door or passing under a lofty archway, 

 unwittingly stoops to avoid bumping his forehead 

 against an imaginary lintel. I was conscious on 

 quitting the room, where I had cast aside the unread 

 newspaper, that the old interest in the affairs of the 

 world at large had in a great measure forsaken me ; 



