330 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



door-steads. You must be very cautious how you inter- 

 fere with our politics ; for, if we find you meddling with 

 them, and by that means cause us to come to loggerheads, 

 we shall be obliged to send you back to your own homes, 

 three or four thousand miles across the Atlantic ; and then, 

 with that great ditch betwixt us, we may hope we shall be 

 good friends. He who casts his eye on the East Indies, 

 will there see quite a different state of things. The con- 

 quered districts have merely changed one European master 

 for another ; and I believe there is no instance of any por- 

 tion of the East Indies throwing off the yoke of the Euro- 

 peans and establishing a government of their own. 



Ye who are versed in politics, and study the rise and 

 fall of empires, and know what is good for civilized man, 

 and what is bad for him, or in other words, what will 

 make him happy and what will make him miserable tell 

 us how comes it that Europe has lost almost her last acre 

 in the boundless expanse of territory which she so lately 

 possessed in the west, and still contrives to hold her vast 

 property in the extensive regions of the east ? 



But whither am I going ? I find myself on a new and 

 dangerous path. Pardon, gentle reader, this sudden devia- 

 tion. Methinks I hear thee saying to me, 



"Tramite quo tendis, majoraque viribus aud.es." 



I grant that I have erred, but I will do so no more. In 

 general I avoid politics ; they are too heavy for me, and I 

 am aware that they have caused the fall of many a strong 

 and able man; they require the shoulders of Atlas to 

 support their weight. 



When I was in the rocky mountains of Macoushia, in 

 the month of June, 1812, I saw four young Cocks of the 

 Rock in an Indian's hut ; they had been taken out of the 

 nest that week. They were of a uniform dirtv brown 



