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Mr. Herndon quotes from the work of Count Castelnau, a Frenchman who ascended the Amazon some years since, an account going to show that some of them are lineal descendants from the monkey. Here is the passage:

"M. Castelnau collected some very curious stories concerning the Indians who dwell upon the banks of the Juruá He says, (vol. 5, p. 105,) 'I cannot pass over in silence a very curious passage of Padre Noronha, and which one is astonished to find in a work of so grave a character in other respects. The Indians, Cauamas and Uginas (says the padre), live near the sources of the river. The first are of a very short stature, scarcely exceeding five palms (about three and a half feet); and the last (of this there is no doubt) have tails, and are produced by a mixture of Indians and Coata monkeys. Whatever may be the cause of this fact, I am led to give it credit for three reasons: first, because there is no physical reason why men should not have tails; secondly, because many Indians, whom I have interrogated regarding this thing, have assured me of the fact, telling me that the tali was a palm and a half long; and, thirdly, because the Reverend Father Friar José de Santa Theresa Ribeiro, a Carmelite, and Curate of Castro de Avelaeñs, assured me that he saw the same thing in an Indian who came from Japurá, and who sent me the following attestation:

"I, José de Santa Theresa Ribeiro, of the Order of our Lady of Mount Carmel, Ancient Observance, &c., certify and swear, in my quality of priest, and on the Holy Evangelists, that when I was a missionary in the ancient village of Parauaù, where was afterwards built the village of Noguera, I saw, in 1755, a man called Manuel da Silva, native of Pernambuco, or Bahia, who came from the river Japurá with some Indians, amongst whom was one-an Infidel brutewho the said Manuel declared to me had a tail; and as I was unwilling to believe such an extraordinary fact, he brought the Indian and caused him to strip, on pretence of removing some turtles from a 'pen,' near which I stood to assure myself of the truth. There I saw, without possibility of error, that the man had a tail, of the thickness of a finger, and half a palm long, and covered with smooth and naked skin. The same Manuel assured me that the Indian had told him that every month he cut his tail, because he did not like to have it too long, and it grew very fast. I do not know to what nation this man belonged, nor if all his tribe had a similar tail; but I understood afterwards that there was a tailed nation upon the banks of the Juruá; and I sign this act and seal it in affirmation of the truth of all that it contains.

"ESTABLISHMENT OF CASTRO DE AVELAENS, OCtober 14, 1768.

"FR. JOSE DE STA. THERESA RIBEIRO.' "M. Baena (Corog, Para) has thought proper to repeat these strange assertions. 'In this river,' says he, speaking of the Juruá (p. 487), 'there are Indians, called Canamas, whose height dees not exceed five palms; and there are others, called Uginas, who have a tail of three or four palms (four palms and an inch, Portuguese, make nearly an English yard), according to the report of many persons. But I leave to every one to put what faith he pleases in these assertions."

"M. Castelnau says, after giving these relations, 'I will add but a word. Descending the Amazon, I saw, one day, near Fonteboa, a black Coats, of enormous dimensions. He belonged to an Indian woman, to whom I offered a large price, for the country, for the

curious beast; but she refused me with a burst of laughter. 'Your efforts are useloss,' said an Indian who was in the cabin; that is her husband.'"

Mr. Herndon himself does not confirm this story, which we suspect the Count borrowed from Voltaire's Candide, but he narrates that when he was at Echènique he bought a young monkey of an Indian woman, which refused to eat plantain when he offered it, whereupon "the woman took it and put it to her breast, where it sucked away manfully and with great gusto. She weaned it in a week, so that it would eat plantain mashed up and put into its mouth in small bits: but the little beast died of mortification, because I would not let him sleep with his arms round my neck!"

Mr. Wallace, in the course of his description of one of the tribes on the river Uaupés, gives so rational a conjecture as to the origin of the fable about a nation of Amazons, or fighting females, that we extract his words:

"The use of ornaments and trinkets of various kinds is almost confined to the men. The women wear a bracelet on the wrists, but none on the neck, and no comb in the hair; they have a garter below the knee, worn tight from infancy, for the purpose of swelling out the calf, which they consider a great beauty. While dancing in their festivals, the women wear a small tanga, or apron, made of beads, prettily arranged: it is only about six inches square, but is never worn at any other time, and immediately the dance is over it is taken off.

The men, on the other hand, have the hair carefully parted and combed on each side, and tied in a queue behind. In the young men, it hangs in long locks down their necks, and, with the comb, which is invariably carried stuck in the top of the head, gives them a most feminine appearance: this is increased by the large necklaces and bracelets of beads, and the careful extirpation of every symptom of beard. Taking these circumstances into consideration, I am strongly of opinion that the story of the Amazons has arisen from these feminine-looking warriors encountered by the early voyager. I am inclined to this opinion, from the effect they first produced on myself, when it was only by close examination I saw that they were men; and, were the front part of their bodies and their breasts covered with shields, such as they always use, I am convinced any person seeing them for the first time would conclude they were women. We have only therefore to suppose that tribes having similar customs to those now existing on the river Uaupés, inhabited the regions where the Amazons were reported to have been seen, and we have a rational explanation of what has so much puzzled all geographers. The only objection to this explanation is, that traditions are said to exist among the natives, of a nation of women without husbands,” Of this tradition, however, I was myself unable to obtain any trace, and I can easily imagine it entirely to have risen from the suggestions and inquiries of Europeans themselves. When the story of the Amazons was first made known, it became of course a point with all future travellers to verify it, or if possible to get a glimpse of these warlike ladies. The Indians must no doubt have been overwhelmed with ques

tions and suggestions about them, and they, thinking that the white men must know best, would transmit to their descendants and families the idea that such a nation did exist in some distant part of the country. Succeeding travellers, finding traces of this idea among the Indians, would take it as a proof of the existence of the Amazons; instead of being merely the effect of a mistake at the first, which had been unknowingly spread among them by preceding travellers, seeking to obtain some evidence on the subject."

Next to the human or demi-human inhabitants the greatest annoyances are the animals. There are alligators, in some of the streams, big enough to bolt an Indian warrior; there are vampire bats, which, in spite of what some naturalists assert, will phlebotomize a horse until he dies; there are jaguars, which are quite as fierce and strong as the royal Bengal tiger; and there are snakes, which the good Father Vernazza avers (and he wrote as late as 1845) are forty-five feet long and five and a half thick, and who suck in their prey, man, bird, or beast, by mere inhalation, from a distance of fifty yards. Yet the plague of the country are the smaller vermin, the ants, the ticks, and the mosquitoes. Our readers will probably remember Sidney Smith's description of the insectivorous tribes, where he says,―

"The bète rouge lays the foundation of a tremendous ulcer. In a moment you are covered with ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your flesh, and hatch a colony of young chigoes in a few hours. They will not live together, but every chico sets up a separato ulcer, and has his own private portion of pus. Flies get entry into your mouth, into your eyes, into your nose: you eat flies, drink flies, and breathe flies. Lizards, cockroaches, and snakes get into the bed: ants eat up the books: scorpions sting you on the foot.

Every thing bites, stings or bruises: every second of your existence you are wounded by some piece of animal life that nobody has ever seen before except Swammerdam and Meriam. An insect with eleven legs is swimming in your teacup, a nondescript of nine wings is struggling in the small beer, or a caterpillar with several dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the bread and butter. All nature is alive, and seems to be gathering her entomological hosts to eat you up, as you are standing, out of your coat, waistcoat, and breeches. Such are the tropics."

Now this is all bad enough; but Mr. Wallace complains of another nuisance, which assailed his ears. "Every night,' he says, speaking of a voyage up the Tocantins, "we had a concert of frogs, which make most extraordinary noises. There are three kinds, which can be heard all at once. One makes a noise somewhat like what one would expect from a frog, namely, a dismal croak, but the sounds uttered by the others were like no animal that I ever heard before. A distant railway train approaching and a blacksmith hammering on his anvil, are what they exactly resemble. They are such true

imitations, that when lying half-dozing in the canoe, I have often fancied myself at home, hearing the familiar sounds of the approaching mail-train, and the hammering of the boiler-makers at the iron-works. Then, we often had the "guarhibas," or howling monkeys, with their terrific noises; the shrill grating whistle of the cicadas and locusts, and the peculiar notes of the suacúras and other aquatic birds, add to these the loud unpleasant hum of the mosquitoes in your immediate vicinity, and you have a pretty good idea of our nightly concert." A serenade of that sort, however, seems to us only a proper accompaniment to the general experiences of life in those latitudes.

For there is another sense that must be sometimes revolted, in spite of the luxuriant fruits that we read of,-the sense of taste. A breakfast of alligator-tail is not perhaps objectionable when you are hard pressed; nor a dinner of raw turtle, which is so excellent when broiled or made into soup, that it may be, possibly, somewhat of a dainty when underdone; but heaven preserve us from monkey chops or a salad of nut-oil and river-hog! Mr. Herndon informs us that monkeys are rather tough, though the livers he found tender and good. Yet, even after a luxurious banquet on liver, Jocko was sure to have his revenge on the feeder, who always nearly perished of nightmare. "Some devil," says the gallant Lieutenant, "with arms as nervous as the monkey's, had me by the throat, and staring on me, with his cold cruel eye, expressed his determination to hold on to the death."

Still, an enthusiast may tell us that the glorious imagery, which nature every where in the tropics addresses to the eye, is a compensation for the defeats suffered by the other senses. The eye, as in Macbeth's soliloquy, "is worth all the rest;" for the grand forms of the trees, the varied hues of the foliage, the endless brilliancy of the birds and butterflies, and the deep azure of the skies, present a panorama which quite overwhelms the mind with its beauty and magnificence. But Mr. Wallace, in spite of the enthusiasm of earlier travellers, is inclined to think that he found quite as much picturesque landscape at home as in the tropics. "It is on the roadside, and on the river's banks," he says, "that we see all the beauties of the tropical vegetation. There we find a mass of bushes, and trees, and shrubs of every height, rising one over another, all exposed to the bright light and fresh air, and putting forth within reach their flowers and fruits, which, in

the forests, only grow far up on the topmost branches. Bright flowers and green foliage combine their charms, and climbing with their flowery festoons, cover over the bare and decaying stems. "Yet,❞—and here comes in his protest,-" pick out the loveliest spots where the most glorious flowers of the tropics expand their glowing petals, and for every scene of this kind, we may find another at home of equal beauty, and with an equal amount of brilliant color. Look at a field of buttercups and daisies,—a hill-side covered with gorse and broom,-or a forest glade azure with a carpet of wild hyacinths, and they will bear a comparison with any scene the tropics can produce. I have never seen any thing more glorious than an old crab-tree in full blossom, and the horse-chestnut, lilac, and laburnum, will vie with the choicest tropical trees and shrubs. In the tropical waters are no more beautiful plants than our white and water lilies, our irises and the flowering rush; for I cannot consider the flower of the Victoria Regia more beautiful than that of the Nymphaea Alba, though it may be larger; nor is it so abundant an ornament of tropical waters as the latter is of ours." Our author then adds, that the changing hues of autumn, and the tender green of spring are never seen in the tropics; while the rich expanse of green meadows and rich pastures are wanting, and the distant landscape fails in the soft and hazy effects which so excite the imagination in the more temperate latitudes. Mr. Wallace leaves out of his description the numerous and splendid families of birds,-the taninjers, the toucans, the macaws, and the parroquets,but we are still inclined to concur in the spirit of his remarks. Even for exquisite scenery "there is no place like home."

We cannot quit the birds without quoting from Herndon a little legend which he heard of one, which had a peculiarly plaintive note, and was called by the Spaniards "the lost soul."

"After we had retired to our mats beneath the shed for the night, I asked the governor if he knew a bird called El alma perdida. He did not know it by that name, and requested a description. I whistled an imitation of its notes; whereupon, an old crone, stretched on a mat near us, commenced, with animated tones and gestures, a story in the Inca language, which, translated, ran somehow thus:

"An Indian and his wife went out from the village to work their chacra, carrying their infant with them. The woman went to the spring to get water, leaving the man in charge of the child, with many cautions to take good care of it. When she arrived at the spring she found it dried up, and went further to look for another. The husband, alarmed at her long absence, left the child and went in search. When they

returned the child was gone; and to their repeated cries as they wandered through the woods in search, they could get no response save the wailing cry of this little bird, heard for the first time, whose notes their anxious and excited imagination syllabled' into pa-pa, ma-ma (the present Quichua name of the bird). I suppose the Spaniards heard this story, and, with that religious poetic turn of thought which seems peculiar to this people, called the bird The lost soul.'

"The circumstances under which the story was told the beautiful, still, starlight night-the deep, dark forest around-the faint-red glimmering of the fire, flickering upon the old woman's gray hair and earnest face as she poured forth the guttural tones of the language of a people now passed away-gave it a sufficiently romantic interest to an imaginative man."

The object of Herndon's visit was, as we have said, to explore the resources of the valley, and to ascertain to what extent it invited the commerce of foreign nations. Our distinguished astronomer, Lieutenant Maury, had long been of the opinion that this region opened the finest opportunities for trade, and was eager to direct the attention of capitalists to the importance and prospective value of a steam navigation of the Amazon. It was

at his instance, therefore, as we suspect, that Lieutenants Herndon and Gibbon were selected for the expedition. Their reports strongly confirm his anticipations as to the wealth of the whole immense district. Our present trade with Para, the city at the mouth of the river, already amounts to about one million of dollars a year, but if the productions of the interior,— the India-rubber, the sarsaparilla, the cocoa, and a thousand other commodities,—could be readily exchanged by means of steamboats, for our goods, the trade might be prodigiously increased. The several governments having jurisdiction over the river and its tributaries, those of Peru and Bolivia in particular, are disposed to pursue a liberal policy in regard to companies which will undertake the steam navigation of it, and it only requires the co-operation of Brazil to throw open the entire valley to the navigation of the world. Brazil has foolishly made a contract with one De Sousa for the exclusive navigation, but it appears to be doubtful whether he will be able to fulfil his part of the bargain, even if it should not turn out that the said contract is an infringement of the treaty with Peru, which stipulates for a joint action of the two nations in all that concerns the subject. Tirado, who was foreign minister of Peru last year, is opposed to the contract of De Sousa, and will succeed, we trust, in getting it disavowed. In the mean time the President of Peru, Don Jose Rufino Echinique, has issued a patriotic and enlightened decree,

which offers the most liberal inducements to the navigation of the river, and to settlements in the districts over which Peru has control. It opens the ports of Nauta and Loreto to commerce, abandoning all import or export duties, and making concessions of lands, accompanied by a certain exemption from taxes, to all settlers. Bolivia has made a decree to the same effect, and it is hoped that Brazil will not long continue to stand in her own light. Herndon writes,—

"Were she to adopt a liberal instead of an exclusive policy, throw open the Amazon to foreign commerce and competition, invite settlement upon its banks, and encourage emigration by liberal grants of lands, and efficient protection to person and property, backed as she is by such natural advantages, imagination could scarcely follow her giant strides towards wealth and greatness.

"She, together with the five Spanish American republics above named, owns in the valley of the Amazon more than two millions of square miles of land, intersected in every direction by many thousand miles of what might be called canal navigation.

"This land is of unrivalled fertility; on account of its geographical situation and topographical and geological formation, it produces nearly every thing essential to the comfort and well-being of man. On the top and eastern slope of the Andes lie hid unimaginable quantities of silver, iron, coal, copper, and quicksilver, waiting but the application of science and the hand of industry for their development. The successful working of the quicksilver mines of Huancavelica would add several millions of silver to the annual product of Cerro Pasco alone. Many of the streams that dash from the summits of the Cordilleras wash gold from the mountain-side, and deposit it in the hollows and gulches as they pass. Barley, quinua, and potatoes, best grown in a cold, with wheat, rye, maize, clover, and tobacco, products of a temperate region, deck the mountain-side, and beautify the valley; while immense herds of sheep, llamas, alpacas, and vicunas feed upon those elevated plains, and yield wool of the finest and longest staple.

"Descending towards the plain, and only for a few miles, the eye of the traveller from the temperate zone

is held with wonder and delight by the beautiful and strange productions of the torrid. He sees for the first time the symmetrical coffee-bush, rich with its dark-green leaves, its pure white blossoms, and its gay, red fruit. The prolific plantain, with its great waving fan-like leaf, and immense pendant branches of golden-looking fruit, enchains his attention. The sugar-cane waves in rank luxuriance before him, and if he be familiar with Southern plantations, his heart swells with emotion as the gay yellow blossom and white boll of the cotton set before his mind's eye the familiar scenes of home.

"Fruits, too, of the finest quality and most luscious flavor, grow hero; oranges, lemons, bananas, pineapples, melons, chirimoyas, granadillas, and many others which, unpleasant to the taste at first, become with use exceedingly grateful to the accustomed palate. The Indian gets hero his indispensable coca, and the forests at certain seasons are redolent with the perfume of the vanilla,"

Let

Neither of the South American nations alone will be able to accomplish much towards the introduction of an energetic foreign population, but with the assistance of northern or European enterprise might make the most gigantic strides. Their inhabitants are not maritime; they have no skill in steam navigation; they are destitute of the necessary capital. But let them encourage the commerce of others, and they will instantly procure all the assistance that they need. them say to the people of the United States, already their best customers and most natural allies, "Come with your steamers laden with manufactures to our free ports," and their grand river would no longer roll in loneliness through the sullen solitudes, but grow white with ships, the precious harbingers of civilization and progress. Only give the Yankee a chance, and, in spite of insects, snakes, frog-concerts, and dirty Indians, he will raise you to power and glory.

BORODINO.

ONE foot in the stirrup, one hand on the mane,

One toss of white plumes on the air;

Then firm in the saddle-and loosened the rein;
And the sword-blade gleams bare!

A white face stares up from the dark frozen ground;

The prowler will shadow it soon:

The dead and the dying lie writhen around,

Cold and bright shines the moon!

There's laurels and gold for the living and proud:
But the ice-wreath of Fame for the slain;

Only Love turns away from the revelling crowd
To her own on the plain!

LE

WHO WAS JULIET'S RUNAWAY!

QUINCY FOLIO OF 1685—COLLIER'S FOLIO 1632-SHAKESPEARE'S NAME.

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ET the Jurors at the Crystal Palace rest in peace. The exhibitors to whom they award an honorable mention will not be thereby made their enemies for life. Mr. Punch,-high authority,assured us that John Bull became furious at an honorable mention,' and even furnished us with the portrait of a gentleman in a rage at having attained that distinction. But it seems indeed, that to use two very trite quotations,- -nous avons changé tout cela, and that it is no longer true that cælum non animum mutantur qui trans mare currunt. In the last November number of this Magazine, we said that "he who discovers the needful word for the misprint "runawayes eyes" in the second Scene of the third Act of Romeo and Juliet, will secure the honorable mention of his name as long as the English language is read and spoken." This opinion has been regarded as a prediction by several enthusiastic Shakesperians; and in fact we have been addressed as if we had at least a certain amount of a certain grade of immortality in our keeping, a portion of which we had promised to bestow upon the lucky conjecturer who should supply the needful word in poor Juliet's soliloquy. Aspirants after so much immortality as is implied in coexistence with the English language, have offered themselves from all quarters of the country. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Missouri, South Carolina, and New York and Maine all furnish candidates.

Since the subject seems to have awakened so general an interest, we give our readers the benefit of the conjectures of our correspondents, and the arguments with which they sustain them. But we can by no means consent to be counted out' of the contest. Long before the appearance of the article which has directed a renewed attention to the notorious error in question, we had ventured upon a conjectural emendation of the passage, which seemed to us not only unobjectionable, but eminently suited to the exigencies of the case; and under the circumstances, we shall be obliged to present our readers with a page or two from a volume of Historical and Critical Comments upon the Text and Characters of Shakespeare now passing through the press. But first for a glance at the efforts of some of our rivals.

Our Western correspondent addresses us through the columns of the St. Louis Intelligencer. After a short deprecatory introduction, he says:

"Without further circumstance, I offer you my substitute, for what is very evidently a misprint. The sentence runs thus: "Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night! That run-away's [noonday's] eyes may wink; and Romeo

Leap to these arms," &c.

"Now, gentlemen, if you read the whole speech set down to Juliet, of which this is a part, the entire context, I think, favors the substitution of 'noonday's' for runaway's.""

He sustains his reading by remarking, what is sufficiently obvious, that "the feverish impatience" of Juliet "chides what to her are the tedious hours of garish day," and that "she invokes the coming of the night as the best boon," because it would bring Romeo to her longing arms. "What then," he asks, 'more likely, than that this lovesick wo man should call upon night to let fall her curtain, and put out, or make wink, the eye of day-the 'noon-day's sun?'"'

The conjectured reading of our St. Louis critic is not without some plausibility; and it resembles somewhat one proposed by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, which will be noticed hereafter, and also the words which have occurred to one of our New England correspondents. But แ noonday's eyes" will not win for its proposer the distinction which he demands, and for very sufficient reasons. Even if there were no objection, as to time, against the word "noonday," there is a literalness and particularity about it which are poetically out of place in the passage for which it is proposed. Juliet is using large and general terms: she calls the West "Phoebus' mansion," and her thoughts spring directly from day to "cloudy night." She is affected only by the ideas of light and obscurity: she does not consider hours or parts of the day or night. To her there is but one grand division of time; and to make her specify noontime, in attributing eyes to day, is to introduce a speciality into her speech incongruous with her tone of thought. But supposing such particularity not objectionable on the higher ground of criticism, the time specified in the term is inconsistent with the reqire

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