12 J WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



musing on, may have full occupation for an hour 

 or two every day at this season amid the varie- 

 gated scenes round the pretty village of Monteiro. 

 In the evening groups sitting at the door, he may 

 sometimes see with a sigh how wealth and the 

 prince's favour cause a booby to pass for a Solon, 

 and be reverenced as such, while perhaps a poor, 

 neglected Camoens stands silent at a distance, 

 awed by the dazzling glare of wealth and power. 

 Retired from the public road he may see poor 

 Maria sitting under a palm-tree, with her elbow 

 in her lap, and her head leaning on one side within 

 her hand, weeping over her forbidden bans. And 

 as he moves on ''with wandering step and slow," 

 he may hear a broken-hearted nymph ask her 

 faithless swain, — 



"How could you say my face was fair, 

 And yet that face forsake? 

 How could you win my virgin heart, 

 Yet leave that heart to break?" 



One afternoon, in an unfrequented part not far 

 from Monteiro, these adventures were near being 

 brought to a speedy and a final close : six or seven 

 blackbirds, with a white spot betwixt the shoul- 

 ders, were making a noise, and passing to and 

 fro on the lower branches of a tree in an aban- 

 doned, weed-grown, orange orchard. In the long 

 grass underneath the tree, apparently a pale green 

 grasshopper was fluttering, as though it had got 

 entangled in it. Wlien you once fancy that the 

 thing you are looking at is really what you take it 

 for, the more you look at it the more you are con- 

 vinced that it is so. In the present case, this was 



