There is far less artistic pleasure in reading _O Caramurú_; it may well be, as most agree, that it, rather than _O Uruguay_, is the national poem, but such a distinction pertains rather to patriotism than to poetry. The better verses of the earlier epic are a balm to the ear and a stimulus to the imagination; those of the later lack communicative essence. Santa Rita Durão, proclaiming in his preface the parity of Brazil with India as the subject of an epic, thus places himself as a rival of Camões; instead, he is an indifferent versifier and an unconscionable imitator; his patriotism, as his purpose, is avowed. The subject of his epic is the half-legendary figure of Diogo Alvares Correa,[5] a sort of Brazilian John Smith, who, wrecked upon the coast, so impressed the natives with the seeming magic of his firearms that he was received as their chief. His particular Pocahontas was the maiden Paraguassú, whom he is supposed to have taken with him to France; here she was baptized--as the disproved story goes--and at the marriage of the pair none less than Henry II and Catherine de Medicis stood sponsor to them. Paragussú’s chief rival is Moema, and the one undisputed passage of the poem is the section in which, together with a group of other lovelorn maidens, she swims after the vessel that is bearing him and his chosen bride off to France. In her dying voice she upbraids him and then sinks beneath the waves. Perde o lume dos olhos, pasma e treme, Pallida a côr, o aspecto moribundo, Com a mão ja sem vigor soltando o leme, Entre as salsas espumas desce ao fundo; Mas na onda do mar, que irado frema, Tornando a apparecer desde o profundo: “Ah! Diogo cruel!” disse com magua. E sem mais vista ser, sorveu-se n’agua.[6] Yet there is a single line in _O Uruguay_ which contains more poetry than this octave and many another of the stanzas in this ten-canto epic. It is that in which is described the end of Cacambo’s sweetheart Lindoya, after she has drunk the fatal potion that reveals to her the destruction of Lisbon and the expulsion of the Jesuits by Pombal, and then commits suicide by letting a serpent bite her. Tanto ere bella no seu rostro a morte! So beautiful lay death upon her face! Like _O Uruguay_, so _O Caramurú_ ends upon a note of spiritual allegiance to Portugal. It is worth while recalling, too, that the Indian of the first is from a Spanish-speaking tribe, and that the Indian of the second is a native Brazilian type. And Verissimo points out that if the Indian occupies more space in the second, his rôle is really less significant than in _O Uruguay_. III