184 VOYAGE DOWN THE EIO NEGEO. 



nightly float. Noiselessly, and unconscious of any move- 

 ment, we were borne down the stream, with the out- 

 lines of the forest-walls faintly visible in the distance, 

 and a strange, starlit sky above us. "Nothing," truth- 

 fully says Humboldt, " awakens in the traveller a livelier 

 remembrance of the immense distance by which he is 

 separated from his country, than the aspect of an un- 

 known firmament." He beholds a new heaven as well as 

 a new earth. He traces the stars and beautiful constel- 

 lations that circle the southern pole, and beholds, with 

 feelings of wonder, the Clouds of Magellan — flushes of 

 myriads of distant lights that adorn these heavens. But, 

 of the bright clusters, that of the Cross especially fixes 

 the attention, and awakens the deepest emotions. " The 

 Portuguese and the Spaniards arc peculiarly susceptible 

 of this feeling ; a religious sentiment attaches them to a 

 constellation, the form of which recalls the sign of the 

 faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the New 

 World. The two great stars which mark the summit and 

 the foot of the Cross having nearly the same right ascen- 

 sion, it follows that the constellation is almost perpen- 

 dicular at the moment when it passes the meridian. This 

 circumstance is known to the people of every nation situ- 

 ated beyond the tropics, or in the southern hemisphere. 

 It has been observed at what hour of the night, in different 

 seasons, the Cross is erect or inclined. It is a time-piece 

 Avhich advances very regularly nearly four minutes a day, 

 and no other group of stars affords to the naked eye an 

 observation of time so easily made. How often have we 

 heard our guides exclaim, in the savannas of Venezuela, 

 ' Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend ! ' How often 

 those words reminded us of that affecting scene, where 

 Paul and Virginia, seated near the source of the river of 

 Lataniers, conversed together for the last time, and where 



