almost terrifies. Man feels here like an insect,--fears like an
insect on the alert for merciless enemies; and the fear is not
unfounded. To enter these green abysses without a guide were
folly: even with the best of guides there is peril. Nature is
dangerous here: the powers that build are also the powers that
putrefy; here life and death are perpetually interchanging office
in the never-ceasing transformation of forces,--melting down and
reshaping living substance simultaneously within the same vast
crucible. There are trees distilling venom, there are plants
that have fangs, there are perfumes that affect the brain, there
are cold green creepers whose touch blisters flesh like fire;
while in all the recesses and the shadows is a swarming of
unfamiliar life, beautiful or hideous,--insect, reptile, bird,--
inter-warring, devouring, preying.... But the great peril of
the forest--the danger which deters even the naturalist;--is the
presence of the terrible _fer-de-lance (trigonocephalus
lanceolatus,--bothrops lanceolatus,--craspodecephalus_),--
deadliest of the Occidental thanatophidia, and probably one of
the deadliest serpents of the known world.

... There are no less than eight varieties of it,--the most
common being the dark gray, speckled with black--precisely the
color that enables the creature to hide itself among the
protruding roots of the trees, by simply coiling about them, and
concealing its triangular head. Sometimes the snake is a clear
bright yellow: then it is difficult to distinguish it from the
bunch of bananas among which it conceals itself. Or the creature
may be a dark yellow,--or a yellowish brown,--or the color of
wine-lees, speckled pink and black,--or dead black with a yellow
belly,--or black with a pink belly: all hues of tropical forest-