These are the chilling final lines of La vorágine – a novel which, as I have shown in the previous chapter, epitomizes the maleficent influence of the tropical forest and its power to entrance, corrupt, and even annihilate the urban traveller. The victims of this telluric ingestion are Cova, his girlfriend, their premature baby, and their travelling companions, who disappear without a trace in the midst of the jungle. The use of the verb ‘devorar’ (which shares the same Latin etymology as ‘vorágine’, vorare) is significant. Replete with overtones of excess and gluttony, the verb was commonly used in European travel writing on the Americas to denote the immoderate dietary habits of native populations. In Robinson Crusoe, for instance, the protagonist refers to the ‘Cannibals, or Men-eaters’ who reside on the ‘Savage Coast between the Spanish Country and Brasils’, and who ‘fail not to murther and devour all the humane Bodies that fall into their Hands’. Swift's Yahoos are likewise ‘rendered […] odious’ for their ‘undistinguishing appetite to devour every thing that came in their way’. Taken literally, then, the description of the jungle ‘devouring’ Cova could be regarded as consistent with colonial views of the jungle and its native inhabitants as irredeemably savage.