The War ii<itli Nature. 77 



to keep iiiy luiiid from lotliargy. Things about 

 wliicli I liad liitlierto cared little now occupied my 

 tliouglits 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 tbe ambitious schemes 

 of Russia, the attitude of the tSubliuie Porte, and 

 the meeting or l^rcaking up of parliaments. When 

 the Eastern Question had lost its ancioit fascination 

 for me I fonnd 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 liun- 

 dreds of desert leagues from all comuuinion witli 

 fellow-christians, surrounded Ijy a great wilderness, 

 waterless and overgrown with thorns, peopled only 

 by pumas, ostriches, and wandering tribes of savage 

 men. In tliis 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 l^ooms forth its loud 

 alarm from the fort. 



It must of necessity have been a case of war to 

 tlie knife witli these white aliens — war not only with 

 the wild tribes that cherish an undying feud against 

 the robbers of their inheritance, but also with 



