“You civilized mortals have yet so many lands to discover, so much to learn from the folk who dwell therein. I could take you to many a strange country where you would see the mere savage turning the simplest of Nature’s gifts to marvellous account. Some day more extraordinary uses will be found for these same things by the only kind of people you think clever. But when that day dawns, such things will soon become common, and their power of usefulness will quickly come to be taken as a matter of course. In this way is all wonder being banished from the earth by the civilization you’re so pleased to call wise. But I’m not here to preach to you. Come, I will take you to a country where everything is yet as Dame Nature made it. It is a country full of possibilities, abounding in natural wonders whose discovery may create many and many a mighty change in the everyday life of the world at large. More than this, I will promise you nothing. You shall see what you see. Let us away.” We are whisked across the sea. At length we are hovering over a seemingly boundless forest, which appears to defy even a single ray of light to pry into its secrets. As we get nearer to the treetops, we notice that parts of the country beneath us are open to the sky. A river, inset with islands and sandbanks, completely severs the forest; a goodly number of streams fight their way into it on either side, now boiling with rage as their passage is interfered with by a stubborn array of rocks, now dashing headlong over a sheer precipice, now corkscrewing a long way round to avoid impenetrable barriers; and, in addition to the breaches made in the forest fortress by these waters, there are patches of grassland openly rejoicing in the sun. Mother Witch assures us that in parts of its course the chief river is five, ten, or even as much as fifteen miles wide; that the sandbanks and islands we see in it are of enormous size; that the patches of grassland cover acres and acres of ground. Of course, she knows what she is talking about, so, in accepting her word about the size of the openings, we are better able to realize the immensity of the mass. For, in a bird’s-eye view, all the features of a landscape are seen in proportion; and as we look from aloft at this country we have come to visit, the outstanding feature is a wilderness which Nature designed as a citadel wherein she could reign supreme, and which, since the days of the Great Beginning of all things, she has fortified against any human desire to interfere with her own imagination and power of achievement.