“It was the twenty-seventh sun since our departure from the cabins. The moon of fire had commenced her course, and everything announced a storm. Towards the hour when the Indian matrons hang up the plough-handle to the branches of the sabin-tree, and when the paroquets retire into the hollows of the cypress, the sky began to be overcast. The voices of the solitude died away, the desert became silent, and the forests were reposing in the midst of a universal calm. Shortly after, the rollings of a distant thunder, prolonged through the woods as old as the world, re-issued from them with sublime sounds. Fearful of being submerged, we hastened to reach the bank of the river, and withdrew into a forest. * The month of July. “The ground in this place was marshy. We advanced with difficulty under a vault of smilax, amidst vines, indigo-plants, bean-trees, and creeping ivy that entangled our feet like nets. The spongy soil trembled around us, and at each instant we were on the point of sinking into the quagmires. Insects without number, and enormous bats, blinded us; bell-serpents were hissing in every direction, and wolves, bears, carcajous, and young tigers, come to hide themselves in these retreats, made them resound with their roarings. “Meanwhile, the darkness increased. The lowering clouds were entering beneath the leafy covering of the woods. Suddenly the sky was rent, and the lightning traced a rapid zig-zag of fire. A violent wind from the west rolled clouds upon clouds; the forests bent; the sky opened time after time, and from between the interstices other skies and ardent scenes might be perceived. What a frightful, what a magnificent spectacle! The lightning set fire to the forest; the conflagration extended like a head-dress of flame; columns of sparks and of smoke besieged the clouds, which were vomiting their flashes into the vast burning mass. Then the Great Spirit covered the mountain with heavy darkness; and from the midst of this chaos there arose a confused moaning, formed by the rushing of the winds, the cracking of trees, the howling of wild beasts, the buzzing of the inflamed vegetation, and the repeated fall of thunderbolts hissing as they died out in the waters. “The Great Spirit knows that at this moment I saw and thought of nothing but Atala. I managed to guard her against the torrents of rain by placing her beneath the inclining trunk of a birch-tree, under which I sat down, holding my well-beloved upon my knees, and warming her naked feet between my hands; and thus I found myself happier than the young spouse who feels her future offspring quiver in her bosom for the first time. [Illustration: 051]