SOUTH AMERICA. 103 



In the evening groups sitting at the door, he may COND 

 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 shoulders, 

 were making a noise, and passing to and fro on 

 the lower branches of a tree in an abandoned, 

 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. When 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 

 convinced it is so. In the present case, this was 



