I
believe the story to be in the main true. It is the sort of story that
no man, I think, would ever invent about himself, for it is neither
grandiose nor flattering, nor yet funny enough to gratify a perverted
vanity.
It concerns the engineer of the steam-launch belonging to the Maranon
cattle estate of the B. O. S. Co., Ltd. This estate is also an
island--an island as big as a small province, lying in the estuary of a
great South American river. It is wild and not beautiful, but the grass
growing on its low plains seems to possess exceptionally nourishing
and flavouring qualities. It resounds with the lowing of innumerable
herds--a deep and distressing sound under the open sky, rising like
a monstrous protest of prisoners condemned to death. On the mainland,
across twenty miles of discoloured muddy water, there stands a city
whose name, let us say, is Horta.
But the most interesting characteristic of this island (which seems like
a sort of penal settlement for condemned cattle) consists in its being
the only known habitat of an extremely rare and gorgeous butterfly.
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