"One day, hunting through the thick jungle, I came to a spot covered with more than one hundred skulls of monkeys of different sizes. Some of these skulls must have been those of formidable animals, and these now and then succeeded, it appears, in giving such bites to this eagle that they disabled him.
"For a while I thought myself in the Valley of Golgotha. Then I saw at the top of a gigantic tree, at the foot of which were the skulls, the nest of the bird, but the young had flown away. I was told by the natives that the guanonien comes and lays in the same nest year after year. When an adult specimen has been secured, it may be found to rival in size the condor of America.
"By the side of wild men, roamed the apes, the chimpanzee forming several varieties. Then came the largest of all, the gorilla, which might be truly called the king of the forest. They all roamed in this great jungle, which seems so well adapted to be their homes; for they live on the nuts, berries, and fruits of the forest, found in more or less numbers throughout the year; but they eat such a quantity of food that they are obliged to roam from place to place, and are found periodically in the same district.
"The elephant has become scarce, and recedes farther and farther every year into the fastnesses of the interior.
"Mile after mile was traveled over without hearing the sound of a bird, the chatter of a monkey, or the footstep of a gazelle, the humming of insects, the falling of a leaf; only the gentle murmur of some hidden stream came upon our ears to break the deadness of this awing silence, and disturb the grandest solitude man can ever behold—a solitude which often chilled me, but which was well adapted for the study of nature."
CHAPTER LXVI.
CROCODILES.
Long before the advent of man upon the globe, there was a period when huge crocodiles swarmed in the rivers of the temperate zones. The diminished heat of the temperate regions of the earth, as we know them to-day, has driven these scourges of all that live in the waters they frequent into the great rivers and lagoons of the torrid zone.
The crocodile is characterized by the depressed head, so indicative of a low order of intelligence; the vast jaw, which, armed with formidable rows of conical teeth, seems designed to snatch and to swallow; and the elongated, mud-colored body, with its long lizard-like tail, resting on short legs. These all stamp him with a peculiar ugliness and frightfulness.