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I taught my warriors to play the pipes of peace, and sixty years have they played them under the great moons of the maize-fields. We were happy. I was happy. "I had seven sons. The white man's plague came; the shadow fell on six of them, and they went away with the storm-birds. They entered the new canoe, and sailed beyond us on the sea of life.

Thus tenacious of life has been the myth of Mother and Maiden, a natural flower of the human heart, found, unborrowed, by the Spaniards in the maize-fields of Peru. Clearly the myth is a thing composed of many elements, glad and sad as the waving fields of yellow grain, or as the Chthonian darkness under earth where the seed awaits new life in the new year.

"Being so far away from home," he continued, speaking slowly and very earnestly now, in a voice that quivered and shook with the depth of the sentiment within him, "being so far away from home would have been like hell to me at times. I don't know what there is, Elsa, about this land of Hungary! how it holds and enchains us! but at times I felt that I must lie down and die if I did not see our maize-fields bordered with the tall sunflowers, our distant, low-lying horizon on which the rising and the setting sun paints such glowing colours. This land of Australia was beautiful too: there were fine fields of corn and vast lands stretching out as far as the eye could reach; but it was not Hungary. There were no white oxen with long, slender horns toiling patiently up the dusty high roads, the storks did not build their nests in the tall acacia trees, nor did the arms of distant wells stretch up toward the sky. It was not Hungary, Elsa! and it would have been hell but for thinking of you. The life of an exile takes all the life out of one. I have heard of some of our Hungarian lads out in America who get so ill with homesickness that they either die or become vicious. But then," he added, with a quick, characteristic return to his habitual light-hearted gaiety, "it isn't everyone who is far from home who has such a bright star as I had to gaze at in my mind .

Monkeys chattered at us, and squirrels leaped among the trees; rats and mice were found in the huts, and argutis in the maize-fields; snakes crawled along the ground, and birds of prey circled high above our heads.

They commenced to crawl, to hop about, and then, as if by one impulse, myriads rose into the air. The breeze impelled them in the direction in which it was blowing, in the direction of the devoted maize-fields. In less than five minutes, from the time they had taken wing, they were over the kraal, and dropping in tens of thousands upon the surrounding fields.

The camp itself extended over a space half a mile in length, surrounded by maize-fields and prairie, the latter sprinkled with muskeet thickets, and with groups of gigantic cactuses; in the high grass between which the horses and oxen of our troops were peaceably grazing.

They would soon make their presence known, when they reached the pumpkin-grounds or maize-fields of the settlers. I was not always alone in my rambles through the forest. Lily would have been only too happy to accompany me, but Aunt Hannah judged it prudent to keep her at home; and, indeed, she had plenty of occupation there.

They saw the earth lodges as of old, thickly clustered along the flats of the Missouri, among their rustling maize-fields. Antelope stopped. "I think you had better give me something to eat, woman," he said, smiling. It was the Sioux way of saying, "Let me have my last meal!" After they had eaten, Stasu opened her buckskin bags and gave her husband his finest suit.

We went down through the gardens, all along the loam-pits; my brother seemed to be choosing a route where we should meet with no one. He kept the dog on the leash to prevent its wandering away. We went a long way, roaming among maize-fields and shrubs, without the idea once occurring to Lorand to take the gun down from his shoulder.

Yüeh-hsi itself lies in the centre of a rock-strewn plain broken by a few rice-and maize-fields, and is important as a military post guarding the trade route against this easy way of attack. The best room of the inn smelt to heaven, but on investigation I found an open loft which proved very possible after ejecting a few fowls.