UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 47 



low grounds near the lake, and lose ourselves in 

 the thickets of mangrove trees, while gathering 

 their curious seeds, and wondering at the long 

 roots they shoot out to the ground, and while 

 you were searching for marsh plants and fern 

 bushes. Indeed, I never, never can forget those 

 days ; nor the still solitude of that valley, the 

 beauty of the rock of Gavia, covered with the 

 blue gloxinia, and the wild mountain stream that 

 came tumbling down into the lake ; nor the poor 

 fishermen who used to look so happy when you 

 gave them a few reals. 



Though we live here on the borders of a forest, 

 it is quite unlike that forest near which the Sen- 

 hor Antonio Gomez lives, and where we used 

 sometimes to spend a few weeks so pleasantly. 

 I miss several little things that seemed to me to 

 belong to a forest, and which used to amuse 

 Marianne and me so much the howling of 

 the monkeys in the wood, that wakened us in 

 the mornings, and the deep noises of the frogs 

 and toads, with the chirp of the grasshoppers and 

 locusts, like a monotonous treble mixed with that 

 croaking bass. 



And then when playing about in the wood 

 after the mists of the night had been dispelled by 

 the rising sun, and when every creature seemed to 

 be rejoicing in the return of day, we had such 

 delight in chasing the pretty butterflies. Nothing 

 at all here like those great butterflies that used to 



