United States or Niue ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Yes, I will go to America, In the primeval forests, with the children of nature, there will be a home for the exile, the homeless one. Madame, I thank you for your sympathy and your goodness, and my thanks shall consist in this, that I subject myself wholly to your will. You loved Queen Marie Antoinette. A blessing on you, and all who love you."

It is to this material that we are mainly indebted for the exquisite cutting instrument of the surgeon, the chisel of the sculptor, the steel plate on which the engraver practises his art, the cutting tools employed in the various processes of skilled handicraft, down to the common saw or the axe used by the backwoodsman in levelling the primeval forest.

The watchers in the cabin by the beach heard the sound of his voice growing ever fainter and fainter, until at last it was swallowed up by the myriad noises of the primeval wood.

These primeval boats are made on the island, thrown together out of fifteen-pennyworth of wood, a few yards of canvas, and a pitch-pot. They have some virtues. They are cheap, and they will not sink. The coraghs always come back, even if bottom up. This process is apt to puzzle the uninformed visitor, who sees a strange and fearful animal, like a huge black-beetle, crawling up the cliffs.

The grounds are interspersed with park, woodland, and forest scenery, and are kept in admirable order, the managers studying to maintain the appearance of original nature, and to impress on the mind of the visitor, that he is ruralizing, far from city life, amongst primeval forest shades; the contiguous scenery is not, however, calculated to carry out the idea.

Growing among blocks of lava, it had assumed the exact shape of an English oak in a poor soil and exposed situation; globular-headed, gnarled, stunted, and most unlike to its giant brethren of the primeval woods, which range upward 60 or 80 feet without a branch. We walked up to see the old fort, commanding the harbour from a height of 800 feet.

In their woods live elephants, rhinoceroses, and tapirs; in the brushwood lurk tigers and panthers; and in the depths of their primeval forests dwell monkeys of various species. The largest is the orang-utang, which grows to a height of five feet, is very strong, savage and dangerous, and is almost always seen on trees.

We squeezed and wriggled through a big crack or cleft in the side of the mountain for about one hundred feet, when we emerged into a large dome-shaped passage, the abode during certain seasons of the year of innumerable bats, and at all times of primeval darkness. There were various other crannies and pit-holes opening into it, some of which we explored.

In all, the Pecos Forest includes some 750,000 acres; and in addition to natural seeding, the Forest men are yearly harrowing in five or six hundred acres of yellow pine; so that in twenty-five years this Forest is likely to be more densely wooded than in its primeval state.

It is amidst scenes like these that we love to follow the Gaul, to picture to ourselves an old race and an old civilization, which combined in so strange a way the greatness and the savageness, the heroism in danger and weakness under temptation, of primeval and half-civilized man.