But now, he doubted.
This forest was interminable, it had an air of being invincible, and Man
seemed at best an infrequent precarious intruder. One travelled for miles,
amidst the still, silent struggle of giant trees, of strangulating
creepers, of assertive flowers, everywhere the alligator, the turtle, and
endless varieties of birds and insects seemed at home, dwelt
irreplaceably--but man, man at most held a footing upon resentful
clearings, fought weeds, fought beasts and insects for the barest
foothold, fell a prey to snake and beast, insect and fever, and was
presently carried away. In many places down the river he had been
manifestly driven back, this deserted creek or that preserved the name of
a _casa_, and here and there ruinous white walls and a shattered
tower enforced the lesson. The puma, the jaguar, were more the masters
here...
Who were the real masters?
In a few miles of this forest there must be more ants than there are men
in the whole world! This seemed to Holroyd a perfectly new idea.
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