172 CAPJPI. Chap. V. 



music in those midday hours when all nature was 

 pausing breathless under the rays of a vertical sun. 

 Here I spent my first Christmas-day in a foreign land. 

 The festival was celebrated by the negroes of their own 

 free will and in a very pleasing manner. The room 

 next to the one I had chosen was the capella, or chapel. 

 It had a little altar which was neatly arranged, and the 

 room was furnished with a magnificent brass chan- 

 delier. Men, women, and children were busy in the 

 chapel all day on the 24th of December decorating 

 the altar with flowers and strewing the floor with 

 orange-leaves. They invited some of their neigh- 

 bours to the evening prayers, and when the simple 

 ceremony began an hour before midnight, the chapel 

 was crowded. They were obliged io dispense with 

 the mass, for they had no priest ; the service there- 

 fore consisted merely of a long litany and a few hymns. 

 There was placed on the altar a small image of the 

 infant Christ, the "MeninoDeos" as they called it, or 

 the child-god, which had a long ribbon depending from 

 its waist. An old white-haired negro led off the litany, 

 and the rest of the people joined in the responses. 

 After the service was over they all went up to the altar, 

 one by one, and kissed the end of the ribbon. The 

 gravity and earnestness shown throughout the jDro- 

 ceedings were remarkable. Some of the hymns were 

 very simple and beautiful, especially one beginning 

 " Virgem soberana, " a trace of whose melody springs to 

 my recollection whenever I think on the dreamy solitude 

 of Caripi. 



The next day after I arrived two blue-eyed and red- 



