CHAPTER VI. 
THE WAR WITH NATURE. 
DugiIncG 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 ina 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. JI 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 ; 
