“We were not long in perceiving that we had gained but little by my deliverance. The desert now unrolled before us its immeasurable solitudes. Without experience in forest life, having lost our way, and walking on at hazard, what was to become of us? Often, while gazing upon Atala, I remembered the ancient story of Agar, that Lopez had given me to read, and which happened in the desert of Beersheba a long time ago, when men lived to three times the age of the oak. “Atala made me a cloak out of some ash-bark, and she also embroidered me a pair of musk rat skin moccasins with porcupine’s hair. In my turn, I did all in my power to ornament her attire. First of all, I placed upon her head a crown of those blue mallows that crowded beneath our feet in the abandoned Indian cemeteries; then I made her necklaces of red azalea-berries; and after all I smiled in the contemplation of her wonderful beauty. “When we encountered a river, we crossed it either on a raft or by swimming. Atala placed one of her hands upon my shoulder, and thus, like a pair of migratory swans, we traversed the solitary waves. “During the great heat of the day we often sought shelter beneath the moss of the cedars. Nearly all the Floridan trees, especially the cedar and the oak, are covered with a white moss, which descends from their branches down to the very ground. At night-time, by moonlight, should you happen to see, in the open savannah, an isolated holm dressed in such drapery, you would imagine it to be a phantom dragging after it a number of long veils. The scene is not less picturesque by day, when a crowd of butterflies, brilliant insects, colibris, green paroquets, and blue jackdaws entangle themselves amongst the moss, and thus produce the effect of a piece of white woollen tapestry embroidered by some clever European workman with beautiful birds and sparkling insects. [Illustration: 043] [Illustration: 045] “It was in the shade of such smiling quarters, prepared by the Great Spirit, that we stopped to repose ourselves. When the winds come down from heaven to rock the great cedar, when the aerial castles built upon its brandies undulate with the birds and the travellers sleeping beneath its shelter, when thousands of sighs pass through the corridors of the waving edifice, there is nothing amongst the wonders of the ancient world to be compared with this monument of the desert.