The young man who incautiously ventures into the mysterious parts of Drury Lane—where vice and crime have a classical reputation—or strolls through the old Latin Quarter of Paris (where some of the streets are anything but safe to pass through), or who finds himself, for whatsoever reason you will, in one of those questionable labyrinths still existing in the most civilized Italian cities, would certainly not run less risk than in facing the dangers of the forest. The dart, the trap, the attack of beast and reptile may be, with courage and calmness, averted or parried, but the evils which menace man, under the hypocritical euphemisms of Society (ever ready to vaunt its impeachableness) injure not only the body but, what is worse, the spirit.
Those who succumb to the latter are ofttimes induced to lament that death does not come swift enough to kill their flesh, after their souls and intellects have been long since slain and consumed.
In the thick of the jungle the spirit rises and wanders free; there are no restraints or limits to its flight. It is inebriated by the simple and serene joys of living; it is pervaded by a current of new, potent energy that makes one feel—alone, in Nature's realm—either immensely great or infinitely small; exquisitely good or miserably wicked.
It is not prudent, when travelling in the forest, to let philosophy make us linger long on the way, but there are some moments in which one's inner life is so intense, in which thought and sentiment are so impetuous that that fleeting atom of time is in itself sufficient to mark an indelible epoch in the existence of men. Who knows but what if Mephistopheles had lead Faust into the virgin forest, and there left him free to his speculations, if the famous invocation would ever have escaped from the fevered lips of the doctor?
But... what is this hissing? It is not the spirit that denies; it is a snake I have disturbed along my path and that has not found my philosophizing over pleasant (like you, perhaps, kind reader) and so I will cut short my digression.
The forest abounds in reptiles. There are innumerable varieties of serpents, big and small, venomous and harmless. It may almost be said (especially towards the plain) that every bush and every tree has one of these inhabitants.
The commonest species are the tigi riló, the tigi paà and the tigi dolò but the most feared are the sendok and the bimaà.
