WILD PRAIRIES. 23 



the first settlers, "when our tents were pitched in the 

 wild. Here all was fresh nature, as in our forsaken 

 homes all had been marked with the labours of men. 

 The sky was blue and cloudless, and the mild south 

 wind gently rustled the trees, as it came loaded with 

 fragrance along the flowering wilderness. The huge 

 straight trees were covered with moss, and their gray 

 trunks rose proudly like columns. Starting hares 

 and deer, and the wild denizens of the woods, 

 bounded away from our path ; and eagles and soar- 

 ing vultures sailed above our heads. Birds of bril- 

 liant plumage flitted among the branches, and count- 

 less millions of water-dwellers, awakened from the 

 long sleep of winter, mingled their cries in the sur- 

 rounding streams. We added to this promiscuous 

 hymn of nature, the clarion echoes of our bugles, the 

 baying of our dogs, and all the glad domestic sounds 

 of birds and animals that have joined partnership 

 with man ; then came at intervals the heavy blows 

 of the woodcutter's axe, the crash of falling trees, 

 and the wild wood-notes of the first songs of man 

 which these deep solitudes have perhaps heard from 

 the creation." 



He who traverses the vast forests of South Ame- 

 rica, where man has not yet fixed his abode, has 

 frequently occasion to observe the marked charac- 

 teristics of the Monkey tribes. At one time he 

 sees the Cacajao (S. melanocephald), an inactive and 

 timid creature, hastening to hide himself in the 

 closest covert of the forest, when annoyed by the 

 petulance of other monkeys, which seem -to delight 

 in disturbing the natural quiet of his temper, while 

 he expresses his displeasure by a kind of convulsive 



