Queer vocation; but then, any vocation is
good that gives an excuse to live out in this wild tropical world.
By one we had Dr. O---- aboard and were waving farewell to the
camp. The return, of course, was not the equal of the outward
trip; even nature cannot duplicate so perfect a thing. But two
raging showers gave us views of the drowning jungle under another
aspect, and between them we awakened vast rolling echoes across
the silent flooded world by shooting at flocks of little birds
with an army rifle that would have killed an elephant.
It is not hard to realize why the bush native does not love the
American. Put yourself in his breechclout. Suppose a throng of
unsympathetic foreigners suddenly appeared resolved to turn all
the world you knew into a lake, just because that absurd outside
world wanted to float steamers you never knew the use of, from
somewhere you never heard of, to somewhere you did not know.
Suppose a representative of that unsympathetic government came
snorting down upon you one day in a wild fearful invention they
called a motor-boat, as you were lolling under the thatch roof
your grandfather built, and cried:
"Come on! Get out of here! We're going to burn your house and turn
this country into a lake."
Flood the land which was your great-grand-father's, the spot where
you used to play leap-frog under the banana trees, the jungle lane
where your mother's courtship days were passed and the ceiga tree
under which she was wedded--if matters were ever carried to that
ceremonious length.
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