d to a ramshackle, thatch-covered
hut a few yards beyond. It was the tumbled vestige of a shelter which
Don Nicolas had erected years before while hunting wild pigs through
this trackless region. An hour later the little group lay asleep on
the damp ground, wrapped in the solitude of the great forest.

The silvery haze of dawn was dimming the stars and deepening into
ruddier hues that tinged the fronds of the mighty trees as with
streaks of blood when Rosendo, like an implacable Nemesis, prodded his
little party into activity. Their first day's march through the
wilderness was to begin, and the old man moved with the nervous,
restless energy of a hunted jaguar. The light breakfast of coffee and
cold _arepa_ over, he dismissed the _bogas_, who were to return to
Boque with the canoes, and set about arranging the cargo in suitable
packs for the _cargadores_ who were to accompany him over the long
reaches of jungle that stretched between them and Llano. Two
_macheteros_ were sent on ahead of the main party to locate and open a
trail. The rest followed an hour later. Before the shimmering,
opalescent rays which overspread the eastern sky had begun to turn
downward, the little cavalcade, led by Rosendo, had taken the narrow,
newly-cut trail and plunged into the shadows of the forest--

"the great, dim, mysterious forest, where uncertainty wavers to an
interrogation point."

CHAPTER 38

The emotion of the jungle is a direct function of human temperament.
Where one sees in it naught but a "grim, green sepulcher," teeming with
malignant, destructive forces, inimical to health, to tranquillity, to
life, another--perhaps a member of the same party--will find in the
wanton extravagance of Nature, her prodigious luxury, her infinite
variety of form, of color, and sound, such stimuli to the imagination,
and such invitation to further discovery and development, as to
constitute a lure as insidious and unescapable as the habit which too
often follows the first draft of the opium's fumes. There are those
who profess to have journeyed through vast stretches of South
American _selva_ without encountering a wild animal. Others, with sight
and hearing keener, and with a sense of observation not dulled by
futile lamentations over the absence of the luxuries of civilized
travel, will uncover a wealth of experiences which feed the memory
throughout their remaining years, and mold an irresistible desire to
penetrate again those