The War with Nature. 7 7 



to keep my mind from lethargy. Things about 

 which I had hitherto cared little now occupied my 

 thoughts and supplied me with pleasurable excite- 

 ment. How fresh and how human it seemed to feel 

 a keen interest in the village annals, the domestic 

 life, the simple pleasures, cares, and struggles of the 

 people I lived with ! This is a feeling only to be 

 experienced in any great degree by the soul that 

 has ceased to vex itself with the ambitious schemes 

 of Russia, the attitude of the Sublime Porte, and 

 the meeting or breaking up of parliaments. When 

 the Eastern Question had lost its ancient fascination 

 for me I found a world large enough for my sym- 

 pathies in the little community of men and women 

 on the Rio Negro. Here for upwards of a century 

 the colony has existed, cut off, as it were, by hun- 

 dreds of desert leagues from all communion with 

 fellow-christians, surrounded by a great wilderness, 

 waterless and overgrown with thorns, peopled only 

 by pumas, ostriches, and wandering tribes of savage 

 men. In this romantic isolation the colonists spend 

 their whole lives, roaming in childhood over the 

 wooded uplands ; in after life with one cloud always 

 on their otherwise sunlit horizon the fear of the 

 red man, and always ready to fly to arms and mount 

 their horses when the cannon booms forth its loud 

 alarm from the fort. 



It must of necessity have been a case of war to 

 the knife with these white aliens war not only with 

 the wild tribes that cherish an undying feud against 

 the robbers of their inheritance, but also with 



