In these forests there is nothing to reassure you. Yonder green and peaceful waters, whence ever and anon proceeds the sound of half-choked sighs,--you place your foot upon them, and with terror discover that they are solid! that the surface is composed of great alligators, with their greenish backs resembling breadths of moss or aquatic herbs! Let a living creature appear, and immediately they raise their heads and put themselves in motion; you behold the strange assemblage rise from the slime in all their horror! But is this all?--Even these monsters which reign on the surface have their tyrants over them. The piranha, or razor-fish, as swift as the cayman is unwieldy, severs with its saw-like teeth the latter's tail, and carries it off before it can wheel round. The cayman, nearly always, mutilated in this manner, would perish, if its cuirass did not prevent its enemy from dissecting it. The same terrible anatomist, with a flash of its scalpel, cuts down as it passes the bird which skims the waves. Aquatic birds which have been wounded by it are frequently caught. And what, then, of the quadrupeds? The most powerful are devoured. A horrible combat is waged without pause in the deep waters,--in the waters living and overflowing with life, but with death also,--where is realized to the letter a rapid and furious suicide of Nature,--Nature devouring in order to re-create itself! [Illustration] The insects in fury and beauty are worthy of this scene. The exalted vitality, revealed among the gadflies and the mosquitoes, by their thirst of blood, is shown in other species by their enchanting colours, their caprices of design, their singularities of form, which either astonish us or terrify. The _Buprestis imperialis_, proud of its green cuirass powdered all over with dust of gold, seems to have passed through the bowels of the metalliferous earth, and enriched itself on the way. The _Buprestis chrysochlorus_, of a yellower green, flutters to and fro like a mounted gem. The _Arlequin_ of Guiana,--a gigantic mower, armed with tremendous antennæ and prodigious legs to traverse the innumerable obstacles offered by the tall herbage,--is marked with black commas on a yellow ground, with inexplicable hieroglyphs,--a being doubly strange and doubly enigmatic. It singularly reminds us of the texture of Indian stuffs, where, for the sake of harmonizing colours not usually brought side by side, the artist traces a number of wavy and broken lines, which soften and blend them into complete accord.