tumultuous roar from the legions of contending animals.

"A universal hubbub wild
Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults the ear
With loudest vehemence."

Even the notes of insects are a deafening crash, like the rattling of
machinery in a cotton-mill. Except in the hush of noonday, the notes of
singing-birds are drowned amidst the howling of monkeys, the whining of
sapajous, the roar of the jaguar, and the dismal hooting of thousands
of wild animals that riot in these awful solitudes. The sight of the
fairest flowers and the most beautiful insects and birds only renders
one more keenly sensitive to the frightful discords that startle and the
perils that surround him.

Similar contrasts are observed in the vegetation of this region, where
the giant trees of the forest are chained in the embraces of vines that
contend with them for existence and finally strangle them. Trees and
other plants are crowded together so promiscuously, that Nature seems to
be striving to collect into one space every possible variety of species.
Trees of the most poisonous and deadly qualities grow side by side with
the Bread-Fruit, the Cocoa-Nut, and the beneficent Cinchona. Here
are the poison and its antidote,--the monster tree and its miniature
epiphyte,--the plant that astonishes by its magnitude, and the one that
delights us by its minuteness. Here, if anywhere on the face of the
earth, may we form some conception of the state of our planet during the
Eocene period, before the world had come under the dominion of the human
race.