MORNING MOONLIGHT SCENE. 417 



horses, asses, mules, and cows of an extensive moun- 

 tain farm, attracted by a march played on a cornu- 

 piston. The retinue of animals quietly yet eagerly 

 followed the new Orpheus, charmed by the martial 

 music that so enchanted them." 



I shall close these memoirs of the mailed Levi- 

 athan by two or three anecdotes. The first, illus- 

 trative of his mischievousness, is introduced by a 

 description of the scene, portrayed by my coadjutor 

 in his peculiarly vivid manner. 



"A friend and I had arranged to rise at four o'clock 

 from our place of stay, to visit the sources of a 

 stream in the neighbourhood, and to trace its course 

 to the sea, in order to ascertain the extent to which it 

 might be rendered available for irrigating the adjacent 

 plain. It was one of those intensely bright moon- 

 lights, which you know to be so exceedingly beautiful 

 in these climates, under a calm and cloudless sky. 

 Nothing stirred ; not a voice sounded ; not a watch- 

 dog was moving in the slumbering villages ; nor a 

 cow lowing, nor a sheep bleating in the contiguous 

 fields. The guinea-corn was in the full milky ear, 

 but no flocks poached it ; nothing was heard till we 

 reached the green commons about the river, when 

 here and there rose up, near and far, at distant in- 

 tervals of time, the shrill wail of the plover, and 

 the solitary call of the snipe from the dewy grass. 

 The crozier stars, standing erect, were twinkling in 

 the far south ; and the silence of the world on which 

 they shone, broken only by these brief intermittent 

 voices, had a character of melancholy solemnity that 

 I never remember to have remarked before. 

 T 5 



