Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/248

 bank, ditch, creek, swarms with "fiddlers," each holding high its single huge white claw in readiness for battle; and the dryer lands are haunted by myriads of ghostly Crustacea,—phantom crabs,—semi-diaphanous creatures that flit over the land with the speed and lightness of tarantulas, and are so pale of shell that their moving shadows first betray their presence. There are immense choruses of tree-frogs by day, bamboulas of water-frogs after sundown. The vast vitality of the ocean seems to interpenetrate all that sprouts, breathes, flies. Cattle fatten wonderfully upon the tough wire-grass; sheep multiply exceedingly. In every chink something is trying to grow, in every orifice some tiny life seeks to hide itself (even beneath the edge of the table on which I wrote some queer little creatures had built three marvelous nests of dry mud);—every substance here appears not only to maintain life but to create it; and ideas of spontaneous generation present themselves with irresistible force.

IV . . . And children in multitude!—children of many races, and of many tints,—ranging