ged to obtain a complete pacification of all concerned.

* * * * *

I had been but a short time in my new office when I decided to make a
tour of inspection through the territory entrusted to my care and I
really do not remember any other of my travels so full of incidents and
emotional adventures. Two, in particular, will never be erased from my
memory.

I was journeying quite by myself, confiding perhaps too much in the
knowledge I had gained of the jungle, and the possibility of being lost
in the forest never entered my head.

And yet this is one of the greatest perils that can befall anybody, for
it may be a compendium of all the others.

He who is born and who grows up in the forest does not run this risk for
certain, because from a slight cut in a tree, a broken reed, a pendant
bough, the smallest sign that would escape the keenest of European eyes,
the native knows how to draw precise indications of the direction to be
followed. Wherever he goes, he never forgets to leave some trace of his
passage in order to find his way back without uncertainty and loss of
time. In this way the Sakais wander about the jungle with astounding
security just as if they were walking along a well-traced out path.

The same prodigious variety of woodland scenery that the forest offers
to the gaze gives it a certain uniformity in the mind of a white man.
The colossal trees that stretch away one after the other as far as can
be seen; the twining vines and creepers which cluster everywhere; the
huge bushes and flowering thickets; the dips and hollows in the ground,
and the little ponds over which the green of reed and rush triumphs
equally with bright floral colours. The European embraces all this in a
sole glance, in its entirety, but cannot discern, like the Sakai, the
difference that exists between this tree and that, this glen and the
other. And if the poor man be alone he will surely be lost; and if he is
lost there is very little chance of his ever getting out again.

* * * * *

Evening was fast approaching; the birds were singing their last songs
for the day, and in the first hour of a brief twilight breathed that
solemn calm which especially belongs to the forest when its more
innocent inhabitants are beginning to conceal themselves for the night,
and the ferocious beasts of darkness are not yet abroad in search of
prey.

It was getting late and I hastened to