space, suspended
on nothing to the eye, the shaft reveals a tangle of shining silver
threads--the web of some large tree-spider. These seemingly distant yet
distinctly visible threads serve to remind me that the human artist is
only able to get his horizontal distance by a monotonous reduplication
of pillar and arch, placed at regular intervals, and that the least
departure from this order would destroy the effect. But Nature produces
her effects at random, and seems only to increase the beautiful illusion
by that infinite variety of decoration in which she revels, binding tree
to tree in a tangle of anaconda-like lianas, and dwindling down from
these huge cables to airy webs and hair-like fibres that vibrate to the
wind of the passing insect's wing.

Thus in idleness, with such thoughts for company, I spent my time, glad
that no human being, savage or civilized, was with me. It was better to
be alone to listen to the monkeys that chattered without offending; to
watch them occupied with the unserious business of their lives. With
that luxuriant tropical nature, its green clouds and illusive aerial
spaces, full of mystery, they harmonized well in language, appearance,
and motions--mountebank angels, living their fantastic lives far above
earth in a half-way heaven of their own.

I saw more monkeys on that morning than I usually saw in the course of
a week's rambling. And other animals were seen; I particularly remember
two accouries I startled, that after rushing away a few yards stopped
and stood peering back at me as if not knowing whether to regard me as
friend or enemy. Birds, too, were strangely abundant; and altogether
this struck me as being the richest hunting-ground I had seen, and it
astonished me to think that the Indians of the village did not appear to
visit it.

On my return in the afternoon I gave an enthusiastic account of my day's
ramble, speaking not of the things that had moved my soul, but only of
those which move the Guayana Indian's soul--the animal food he craves,
and which, one would imagine, Nature would prefer him to do without, so
hard he finds it to wrest a sufficiency from her. To my surprise they
shook their heads and looked troubled at what I said; and finally my
host informed me that the wood I had been in was a dangerous place; that
if they went there to hunt, a great injury would be done to them; and he
finished by advising me not to visit it again.

I began to understand from their