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 w^as 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. 
