The War with Nature. ei 
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 [ 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, aud 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 
