132 THE COMBAT. 
serpent, the most venomous of his tribe. He was about to cut it in 
two when a merciful Hindu interposed, obtained its pardon, and took 
up the serpent. Stung by it, he died immediately. 
Such are the terrors of nature in those formidable climates. But 
reptiles, now-a-days rare, are not the greatest curse. In all places 
and at all times it is now the insect. Insects everywhere, and in 
everything ; they possess an infinity of means for attacking you; 
they walk, swim, glide, fly; they are in the air, and you breathe 
them. Invisible, they make known their presence by the most 
painful wounds. Recently, in one of our sea-ports, an official of the 
customs opened a parcel of papers brought from the colonies a long 
time previously. A fly furiously darted out of it; it pursued, it 
stung him; two days afterwards he was a corpse. 
The hardiest of men, the buccaneers and filibusters, declared that of 
all dangers and of all pains they dreaded most the wounds of insects. 
Frequently intangible, invisible, irresistible, they are destruction 
itself under an unavoidable form. How shall you oppose them when 
they make war upon you in legions? Once, at Barbadoes, the in- 
habitants observed an immense army of great ants, which, impelled 
by unknown causes, advanced in a serried column and in the same 
direction against the houses. To kill them was only trouble lost. 
There were no means of arresting their progress. At last an ingenious 
mind fortunately suggested that trains of gunpowder should be laid 
across their route, and set on fire. These volcanoes terrified them, 
and the torrent of invasion gradually turned aside. 
No medieval armoury, with all the strange weapons then made 
use of; no chirurgical implement factory, with the thousands of 
dreadful instruments invented by modern art, can be compared with 
the monstrous armour of Tropical insects—their pincers, their nippers, 
their teeth, their saws, their horns, their augers, all their tools of 
combat, of death, and of dissection, with which they come armed to the 
battle, with which they labour, pierce, cut, rend, and finely partition, 
with skill and dexterity equal to their furious blood-thirstiness. 
Our grandest works may not defy the energetic force of these 
