58 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 



"the living light, sacred to the mariner" ( 90 ). He paints 

 the danger-threatening water-spout in its gradual deve- 

 lopment ; " how the cloud, woven of thin vapour, whirls 

 round in a circle, and sending down a slender tube sucks 

 up the flood as if athirst ; and how, when the black cloud 

 has drunk its fill, the foot of the cone recedes, and flying 

 back to the sky, restores to the waves, as fresh water, the 

 salt stream which it had drawn from them with a surging 

 noise" ( 91 ). "Let the book-learned," says the poet 

 and his taunt might almost as well apply to the present 

 time " try to explain the wonderful things hidden from the 

 world ; they who, guided by (so-called) science and their own 

 conceptions only, are so willing to pronounce as false, what is 

 heard from the mouth of the sailor whose only guide is 

 experience/' 



Camoens shines, however, not only in the description of 

 single phsenorfnena, but also where large masses are com- 

 prehended in one view. The third canto paints with a few 

 traits the whole of Europe, from the coldest north, " to the 

 Lusitanian kingdom, and the strait where Hercules accom- 

 plished his last labour" ( 92 ). The manners and state of 

 civilisation of the different nations are alluded to. Prom the 

 Prussians, the Muscovites, and the tribes " que o Bheno 

 frio lava," he hastens to the glorious fields of Hellas, ' ' que 

 creastes os peitos eloquentes, e os juizos de alta phantasia." 

 In the tenth canto the view becomes still more extended : 

 Thetys conducts Gama to the summit of a lofty mountain to 

 shew him the secrets of the structure of the universe 

 (" machina do mundo"), and to disclose to him the courses 

 of the planets, (according to the views of Ptolemy). ( 93 ) It- 

 is a vision in the style of Dante, and as the Earth is the 



