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Some obliging persons, from whom we had received civilities during our short stay in the place, came down to say their farewell at the river’s side; and now, as we stood with them at the distance of three or four yards from the “compromised” officer, they asked if we were perfectly certain that we had wound up all our affairs in Christendom, and whether we had no parting requests to make.
On the 9th of March, sixty days after their departure from the Pacific, the adventurers reached the river’s mouth, having completed their remarkable feat of crossing the continent in the face of the most threatening perils from man and nature.
At the close of day, the vampires leave the hollow trees, whither they had fled at the morning’s dawn, and scour along the river’s banks in quest of prey. On waking from sleep, the astonished traveller finds his hammock all stained with blood. It is the vampire that has sucked him.
The kessi-kessi paroquets were in great abundance; and the fine scarlet ara innumerable in the coucourito trees at a distance from the river’s bank. In the Tacatou was seen the troupiale. It was charming to hear the sweet and plaintive notes of this pretty songster of the wilds. The Portuguese call it the nightingale of Guiana.
The time I told you about, don’t you know?" "Yes, I remember," said Jack. He observed with sickening distinctness that the night had begun to fall, the river’s silver ribbon had become a black snake, and that the mountain range beyond loomed chill and dark and cheerless. "I guess I ought to be getting into my things," he said, moving toward his own door.
Close along on the river’s edge, through seven sweet miles of rustling boughs and deepest shade, the city spreads out her whole length. As a man falls flat, face forward on the brook, that he may drink and drink again, so Damascus, thirsting for ever, lies down with her lips to the stream and clings to its rushing waters.
Time stops for no one, but I did my best; I don’t reproach myself.’ There’s the true philosopher, though a slave; more outspoken than Æsop, more practical than Epictetus.” Callista began singing to herself:— “I wander by that river’s brink Which circles Pluto’s drear domain; I feel the chill night breeze, and think Of joys which ne’er shall be again.
Then there was Königstein, seen far away, a square-topped mountain, greyish white with time and weather, soaring above the river’s level some fourteen hundred feet.
After a day’s peaceful drifting with the river’s current, they reached the fort of Lillo, where, more majorum, as night was falling, they prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might accrue “from running down a continent in the dark.” There was, besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight, under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort the insolent Dutch, whom they, with some aid from France as the Irishman said of his marriage, for love, and a trifle of money had driven from their country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and they fell to, and sang the Brabançon, and drank Flemish beer till bed-time.
Each side of the river presents an uninterrupted range of wood, just as it did below. All the productions found betwixt the plantations and the rock Saba are to be met with here. From Simon’s to the great fall there are five habitations of the Indians—two of them close to the river’s side; the other three a little way in the forest.
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