vast, teeming, baffling solitudes.

It is true, the sterner aspect of the South American jungle
affords little invitation to repose or restful contemplation. And
the charm which its riotous prodigality exerts is in no sense
idyllic. For the jungle falls upon one with the force of a blow. It
grips by its massiveness, its awful grandeur. It does not entice
admiration, but exacts obeisance by brute force. Its silence is a
dull roar. Its rest is continuous motion, incessant activity. The
garniture of its trackless wastes is that of great daubs of vivid
color, laid thick upon the canvas with the knife--never modulated,
never worked into delicate shading with the brush, but attracting
by its riot, its audacity, its immensity, its disdain of convention,
its utter disregard of the canons cherished by the puny mind that
contemplates it. The forest's appeal is a reflex of its own infinite
complexity. The sensations which it arouses within the one who steps
from civilization into its very heart are myriad, and often
terrible. The instinct of self-preservation is by it suddenly,
rudely aroused and kept keenly alive. Its inhospitality is menacing.
The roar of its howling monkeys strikes terror to the timid heart.
The plaintive calls of its persecuted feathered denizens echo through
the mysterious vastnesses like despairing voices from a spirit
world. The crashing noises, the strange, weird, unaccountable
sounds that hurtle through its dimly lighted corridors blanch the
face and cause the hand to steal furtively toward the loosely
sheathed weapon. The piercing, frenzied screams which arise with
blood-curdling effect through the awful stillness of noonday or the
dead of night, turn the startled thought with sickening yearning
toward the soft charms of civilization, in which the sense of
protection is greater, even if actual security is frequently less.

Because of Nature's utter disregard of the individual, life is
everywhere. And that life is sharply armed and on the defensive.
The rising heat-waves hum with insects. The bush swarms with them.
Their droning murmur crowds the air. The trunks of trees, the
great, pendent leaves of plants, the trailing vines, slimy with dank
vegetation, afford footing and housing to countless myriads of
them, keenly alert, ferociously resistive. The decaying logs fester
with scorpions. The ground is cavernous with the burrows of
lizards and crawling forms, with centipedes and fierce formicidae.
Deat