nis capitum scientia sat certus præmissis interrogationibusque necessariis eum sacris undis mox ablui, Ludovici nomine insignivi. Hoc a me præstitum 23 Junii, S. Joannis Baptiste vigilia circa horam decimam antemeridianam. Eodem die circa vesperum nullo morbo, aut apoplexia indicio accedente placidissime expiravit. « Hic eventus, universo oppido compertus, quemque juratus testari possum, in admirationem rapuit omnes. Lectoris arbitrio, quid de hoc sentiendum sit, relinquo. Nunquam tamen in animum inducere meum, potui, ut factum hoc fortuitum putarem. Eximiæ Dei clementiæ tribuo, quod hi tres sylvicole à me sint reperti in ignotis sylvarum latebris, quod mihi ad oppidum meum, ad amplectendam religionem se hortanti morem promptissime gesserint, quod sacro latice expiati vitam clauserint. Optimum Numen in Cœlo consociatos voluit, qui tot annos in sylva contubernales fuere incredibili morum integritate. Fateor, dulcissimam mihi etiamnum accidere expeditionis ad flumen Empalado memoriam, quæ licet multis molestiis, periculisque mihi constiterit, ternis illis sylvicolis felicissima fuit; Hispanis utilissima: hi equidem à me facti certiores, quod per immensos illos nemorum tractus nulla porro Barbarorum vestigia extent, istic per triennium quæstu maximo multa centenariorum millia herbæ Paraquaricæ collegerunt. Ne que id rarum, missionariorum, qui sylvas herbæ feraces barbaris liberant, sudore, ac periculo Hispanos ditescere mercatores. His tamen nunquam in mentem venit ad alendos, vestiendosque catechumenos vel micam, filumve contribuere. Illorum corpora, ut animi missionariorum sæpissime inopum curæ relinquuntur.»-Dobrizhoffer de Abiponibus, Lib. Prodromus, pp. 97–106.

PROEM.

THAT was a memorable day for Spain,
When on Pamplona's towers, so basely won,
The Frenchmen stood, and saw upon the plain
Their long-expected succours hastening on:
Exultingly they mark'd the brave array,

And deem'd their leader should his purpose gain,
Though Wellington and England barr'd the way.
Anon the bayonets glitter'd in the sun,
And frequent cannon flash'd, whose lurid light
Redden'd through sulphurous smoke: fast vollying

round

Roll'd the war-thunders, and with long rebound Backward from many a rock and cloud-capt height In answering peals Pyrene sent the sound. Impatient for relief, toward the fight The hungry garrison their eye-balls strain: Vain was the Frenchman's skill, his valour vain; And even then, when eager hope almost Had moved their irreligious lips to prayer, Averting from the fatal scene their sight, They breathed the imprecations of despair. For Wellesley's star hath risena scendant there; Once more he drove the host of France to flight, And triumphed once again for God and for the right.

That was a day, whose influence far and wide The struggling nations felt; it was a joy

Wherewith all Europe rung from side to side.
Yet hath Pamplona seen in former time
A moment big with mightier consequence,
Affecting many an age and distant clime.
That day it was which saw in her defence,
Contending with the French before her wall,
A noble soldier of Guipuzcoa fall,

Sore hurt, but not to death. For when long care
Restored his shatter'd leg and set him free,
He would not brook a slight deformity,
As one who being gay and debonnair,
In courts conspicuous, as in camps must be :
So he forsooth a shapely boot must wear; '
And the vain man, with peril of his life,
Laid the recovered limb again beneath the knife.

Long time upon the bed of pain he lay
Whiling with books the weary hours away; 2
And from that circumstance and this vain man
A train of long events their course began,
Whose term it is not given us yet to see.
Who hath not heard Loyola's sainted name,
Before whom Kings and Nations bow'd the knee?
Thy annals, Ethiopia, might proclaim
What deeds arose from that prolific day;
And of dark plots might shuddering Europe tell.
But Science too her trophies would display;
Faith give the martyrs of Japan their fame;
And Charity on works of love would dwell
In California's dolorous regions drear;
And where, amid a pathless world of wood,
Gathering a thousand rivers on his way,
Huge Orellana rolls his affluent flood;
And where the happier sons of Paraguay,

By gentleness and pious art subdued,

Bow'd their meek heads beneath the Jesuit's sway,
And lived and died in filial servitude.

I love thus uncontroll'd, as in a dream,
To muse upon the course of human things;
Exploring sometimes the remotest springs,
Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam;
Or following, upon Thought's audacious wings,
Into Futurity, the endless stream.

The hideous malady which lost its power
When Jenner's art the dire contagion stay'd,
Among Columbia's sons, in fatal hour,
Across the wide Atlantic wave convey'd,
Its fiercest form of pestilence display'd:
Where'er its deadly course the plague began
Vainly the wretched sufferer look'd for aid;
Parent from child, and child from parent ran,

Devices these by poor weak nature taught,
Which thus a change of suffering would obtain ;
And flying from intolerable thought

And piercing recollections, would full fain
Distract itself by sense of fleshly pain

From anguish that the soul must else endure.
Easier all outward torments to sustain,
Than those heart-wounds which only time can cure,
And He in whom alone the hopes of man are sure.

IX.

None sorrow'd here; the sense of woe was sear'd,
When every one endured his own sore ill.
The prostrate sufferers neither hoped nor fear'd
The body labour'd, but the heart was still;-
So let the conquering malady fulfil

Its fatal course, rest cometh at the end!
Passive they lay with neither wish nor will
For aught but this; nor did they long attend

IV.

A feeble nation of Guarani race,

Thinn'd by perpetual wars, but unsubdued,

Had taken up at length a resting place

Among those tracts of lake and swamp and wood,

Where Mondai issuing from its solitude

Flows with slow stream to Empalado's bed.

It was a region desolate and rude;

But thither had the horde for safety fled,

X.

Who is there to make ready now the pit,

The house that will content from this day forth

Its easy tenant? Who in vestments fit
Shall swathe the sleeper for his bed of earth,
Now tractable as when a babe at birth?
Who now the ample funeral urn shall knead,
And burying it beneath his proper hearth
Deposit there with careful hands the dead,

VI.

Alas, it was no medicable grief

Which herbs might reach! Nor could the juggler's

power

With all his antic mummeries bring relief. Faith might not aid him in that ruling hour, Himself a victim now. The dreadful stour None could escape, nor aught its force assuage. The marriageable maiden had her dower From death; the strong man sunk beneath its rage, And death cut short the thread of childhood and of age. VII.

No time for customary mourning now; With hand close-clench'd to pluck the rooted hair, To beat the bosom, on the swelling brow Inflict redoubled blows, and blindly tear The cheeks, indenting bloody furrows there, The deep-traced signs indelible of woe; Then to some crag, or bank abrupt, repair, And giving grief its scope infuriate, throw The impatient body thence upon the earth below.

XII.

But nature for her universal law

5

Hath other surer instruments in store, Whom from the haunts of men no wonted awe Withholds as with a spell. In swarms they pour From wood and swamp: and when their work is o'er On the white bones the mouldering roof will fall; Seeds will take root, and spring in sun and shower; And Mother Earth ere long with her green pall, Resuming to herself the wreck, will cover all.

XIII.

Oh! better thus with earth to have their part,
Than in Egyptian catacombs to lie,

Age after age preserved by horrid art,
In ghastly image of humanity!6

Strange pride that with corruption thus would vie!
And strange delusion that would thus maintain
The fleshly form, till cycles shall pass by,
And in the series of the eternal chain,
The spirit come to seek its old abode again,

XIV.

One pair alone survived the general fate;
Left in such drear and mournful solitude,
That death might seem a preferable state.
Not more deprest the Arkite patriarch stood,
When landing first on Ararat he view'd,
Where all around the mountain summits lay,
Like islands seen amid the boundless flood!
Nor our first parents more forlorn than they,
Through Eden when they took their solitary way.
XV.

Alike to them, it seem'd in their despair,
Whither they wander'd from the infected spot.
Chance might direct their steps: they took no care;
Come well or ill to them, it matter'd not!
Left as they were in that unhappy lot,
The sole survivors they of all their race,

They reck'd not when their fate, nor where, nor what,
In this resignment to their hopeless case,
Indifferent to all choice or circumstance of place.

XVI.

That palsying stupor past away ere long, And as the spring of health resumed its power, They felt that life was dear, and hope was strong. What marvel! T was with them the morning hour, When bliss appears to be the natural dower Of all the creatures of this joyous earth; And sorrow fleeting like a vernal shower Scarce interrupts the current of our mirth; Such is the happy heart we bring with us at birth.

XVII.

Though of his nature and his boundless love
Erring, yet tutor'd by instinctive sense,
They rightly deem'd the Power who rules above
Had saved them from the wasting pestilence.
That favouring power would still be their defence:
Thus were they by their late deliverance taught
To place a child-like trust in Providence,

And in their state forlorn they found this thought Of natural faith with hope and consolation fraught.

XVIII.

And now they built themselves a leafy bower,
Amid a glade, slow Mondai's stream beside,
Screen'd from the southern blast of piercing power:
Not like their native dwelling, long and wide,
By skilful toil of numbers edified,

The common home of all, their human nest,
Where threescore hammocks pendant side by side
Were ranged, and on the ground the fires were drest;
Alas that populous hive hath now no living guest!

XIX.

A few firm stakes they planted in the ground, Circling a narrow space, yet large enow; These strongly interkuit they closed around With basket-work of many a pliant bough. The roof was like the sides; the door was low, And rude the hut, and trimm'd with little care, For little heart had they to dress it now; Yet was the humble structure fresh and fair, And soon its inmates found that Love might sojourn

there.

XX.

Quiara could recall to mind the course Of twenty summers; perfectly he knew Whate'er his fathers taught of skill or force. Right to the mark his whizzing lance he threw, And from his bow the unerring arrow flew With fatal aim: and when the laden bee Buzz'd by him in its flight, he could pursue Its path with certain ken,7 and follow free Until he traced the hive in hidden bank or tree.

XXI.

Of answering years was Mounema, nor less Expert in all her sex's household ways. The Indian weed she skilfully could dress; And in what depth to drop the yellow maize She knew, and when around its stem to raise The lighten'd soil; and well could she prepare Its ripen'd seed for food, her proper praise; Or in the embers turn with frequent care Its succulent head yet green, sometimes for daintier fare.

XXII.

And how to macerate the bark she knew, And draw apart its beaten fibres fine, And bleaching them in sun, and air, and dew; From dry and glossy filaments entwine With rapid twirl of hand the lengthening line; Next interknitting well the twisted thread, In many an even mesh its knots combine, And shape in tapering length the pensile bed, Light hammock there to hang beneath the leafy shed.

XXIII.

Time had been when expert in works of clay She lent her hands the swelling urn to mould, And fill'd it for the appointed festal day With the beloved beverage which the bold Quaff'd in their triumph and their joy of old; The fruitful cause of many an uproar rude, When in their drunken bravery uncontroll'd, Some bitter jest awoke the dormant feud, And wrath and rage and strife and wounds and death ensued.

XXIV.

These occupations were gone by: the skill
Was useless now, which once had been her pride.
Content were they, when thirst impell'd, to fill
The dry and hollow gourd from Mondai's side;
The river from its sluggish bed supplied
A draught for repetition all unmeet;
Howbeit the bodily want was satisfied;
No feverish pulse ensued, nor ireful heat,

Their days were undisturb'd, their natural sleep was

sweet.

XXV.

She too had learnt in youth how best to trim The honoured Chief for his triumphal day, And covering with soft gums the obedient limb And body, then with feathers overlay, In regular hues disposed, a rich display. Well-pleased the glorious savage stood and eyed The growing work; then vain of his array Look'd with complacent frown from side to side, Stalk'd with elater step, and swell'd with statelier pride.