A DESCEIPTION OF JAVITA. 
257 
1851.] 
writing a description of the village and its inhabitants, in 
what may probably be very dreary blank verse ; but as it 
shows my ideas and thouglits at the time, I may as well 
give it the reader in place of the more sober and matter- 
of-fact view of the matter I should probably take now. 
I give it as I wrote it, in a state of excited indignation 
against civilized life in general, got up to relieve the mo- 
notony of my situation, and not altogether as my views 
when writing in London in 1853. 
A DESCRIPTION OF JAVITA. 
’Tis where the streams divide, to swell the floods 
Of the two mighty rivers of our globe ; 
Where gushing brooklets in their narrow beds 
Lie hid, o’ershadow’d by th’ eternal woods, 
And trickle onwards, — these to increase the wave 
Of turbid Orinooko ; those, by a longer course 
In the Black Elver’s isle-strewn bed, flow down 
To mighty Amazon, the river-king, 
And, mingled with his all-engulfing stream. 
Go to do battle with proud Ocean’s self, 
And drive him back even from his own domain. 
There is an Indian village ; all around. 
The dark, eternal, boundless forest spreads 
Its varied foliage. Stately palm-trees rise 
On every side, and numerous trees unknown 
Save by strange names uncouth to English ears. 
Here I dwelt awhile, the one white man 
Among perhaps two hundred living souls. 
They pass a peaceful and contented life. 
These black-hair’d, red-skinn’d, handsome, half-wild men. 
Directed by the sons of Old Castile, 
They keep their village and their houses clean ; 
And on the eve before the Sabbath-day 
Assemble all at summons of a bell. 
To sweep within and all around their church, 
In which next morn they meet, all neatly dress’d, 
S 
