"The country is superb!" said the doctor.
"Here are some animals," added Joe. "Men are not
far away."
"Oh, what magnificent elephants!" exclaimed Kennedy.
"Is there no way to get a little shooting?"
"How could we manage to halt in a current as strong
as this? No, Dick; you must taste a little of the torture
of Tantalus just now. You shall make up for it afterward."
And, in truth, there was enough to excite the fancy of
a sportsman. Dick's heart fairly leaped in his breast as
he grasped the butt of his Purdy.
The fauna of the region were as striking as its flora.
The wild-ox revelled in dense herbage that often concealed
his whole body; gray, black, and yellow elephants of the
most gigantic size burst headlong, like a living hurricane,
through the forests, breaking, rending, tearing down,
devastating every thing in their path; upon the woody
slopes of the hills trickled cascades and springs flowing
northward; there, too, the hippopotami bathed their huge
forms, splashing and snorting as they frolicked in the
water, and lamantines, twelve feet long, with bodies like
seals, stretched themselves along the banks, turning up
toward the sun their rounded teats swollen with milk.
It was a whole menagerie of rare and curious beasts in
a wondrous hot-house, where numberless birds with plumage
of a thousand hues gleamed and fluttered in the sunshine.
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