Under this arrangement the fire would
keep smouldering for twenty-four hours, to be used anew for the next
repetition of the smoking process.
In the afternoon we again went out to hunt. This time I took only a
12-gauge shotgun. As we travelled through the forest I was impressed
once more by the fascination of the grandly extravagant vegetation.
But there is little charm about it, nothing of the tranquillity our
idyllic Catskills or even the sterner Adirondacks, create. There is no
invitation to repose, no stimulus to quiet enjoyment, for the myriad
life of the Amazon's jungle forest never rests. There is always some
sound or some movement which is bound to stir in one the instinct
of self-preservation. You have to be constantly alive to the danger
of disagreeable annoyance from the pests that abound, or of actual
bodily harm from animals of the reptilian order.
Were I in possession of adequate descriptive power I could picture
the impression that this jungle creates upon the mind of one from the
North, but now, as I once more sit in a large city with sky-scrapers
towering about me, and hear the rattling noise of the elevated railway
train as it rushes past, my pen fails me and I have to remove myself on
the wings of thought to those remote forests, fully realising, "_Beatus
ille, qui procul negotiis, ut_" etc.
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