80 
THE GOLDEN ELVER. 
will advertise excursions from Rio, express 
trains with sleeping cars, hotel expenses and 
guides included. Nor from Rio alone : they 
will run you out from London, three days at 
the Falls, at an inclusive charge there and back, 
English spoken all the way, and first-class 
accommodation in steamer, train and hotel. 
You shall see what we saw, but it shall be tamed, 
that savage wild thing, and behave prettily for 
you. No need to wade. A neat girder bridge 
of constructional steel shall carry you out to the 
macaws’ island. True, the macaws will either 
have been all sold to maiden ladies, or have fled 
with indignant shrieks to safe solitudes; but 
what does that matter compared with the 
marvels which you shall witness of progress and 
civilisation ? On the second day of your three 
(the first you will devote to the Falls, as per 
schedule) you shall be taken over the new Power 
House, and you shall mark with approval how 
all this force has been harnessed for the service 
of man, and no longer allowed to run to waste, 
in Nature’s foolish fashion; and you shall swell 
with satisfaction at noting how science is 
continually making the world an easier place 
to live in. 
Well, the world must move of course, and 
to repine at change is a silly and futile attitude 
of mind. It is not that, nor is it distress at the 
destruction of an object of wild beauty, which 
makes one question whether progress will bring 
