"Why," said he, "that's easy enough. Don't all the geographers tell us
that the interior of Africa is made up, so far as known, of alternate
deserts and jungles, like the patches on a coverlet? Very well. I
conform to this general principle of the continent. I put half of the
canvas in desert, and the rest in jungle, and I can't be far out of the
way. Take the idea?"
"Perfectly," said Matthew Maltboy; "but if you have nothing but
alternate, deserts and jungles, it strikes me your panorama will be a
little monotonous. Perhaps I am wrong." (Maltboy always offered
suggestions timidly.)
"I have thought of that, and guarded against it. I shall fill the
jungles with animated life--elephants, lions, tigers, panthers,
leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, crocodiles,
boa constrictors, and other specimens of natural history indigenous to
that delightful region."
"Good!" cried Overtop; "and if you will take a hint from me, you will
show your elephants in the act of being caught by natives, or engaged in
combats with each other; your lions fighting your tigers or your
rhinoceroses; your hippopotamuses engaged in death struggles with your
crocodiles; and your boa constrictors gobbling down your natives--or, if
that is objectionable on the score of humanity, your monkeys.
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