Dawn was beginning to tinge the clouds with its opaline rays, the stars went out one after the other in the gloomy depths of the sky, and on the extreme blue line of the horizon a bright red reflection, precursor of sunrise, showed that day would ere long appear. Thousands of invisible birds, hidden beneath the foliage, suddenly woke up, and melodiously began their morning concert, while the yells of the wild beasts quitting the watering places, and returning slowly to their unexplored lairs, became gradually more dull and indistinct. At this moment the breeze rose, burst into the dense cloud of steam which at sunrise exhales from the earth in these intertropical regions, whirled it round for an instant, then rent it asunder, and scattered it in space; thus displaying, without any apparent transition, the most delicious landscape the dreaming mind of poet or painter could imagine. It is, before all, in America that Providence appears to have taken a pleasure in lavishing the most striking landscape effects, and in infinitely varying the contrasts and harmonies of that puissant nature which can only be found there. Through the centre of an immense plain, circled on all sides by the tall foliage of a virgin forest, there ran in capricious windings a sandy road, whose golden colour contrasted harmoniously with the deep green of the grass and the silvery whiteness of a narrow stream which the first beams of the sun caused to sparkle like a casket of jewels. Not far from the stream, and at about the middle of the plain, rose a white house with a verandah running round it, and a roof of red tiles. This house, prettily covered with creepers that almost hid its walls, was a _Venta_, or hostelry, built on the top of a small mount. It was reached by an imperceptible ascent, and, owing to its position, commanded the immense and grand landscape. Before the door of the venta several dragoons, picturesquely grouped, and about twenty in number, were saddling their horses while the arrieros were actively engaged in loading seven or eight mules. Along the road and some paces from the venta, several horsemen, resembling black dots, could be seen just entering the forest to which we alluded, a forest which rose gradually, and was commanded by a girdle of lofty mountains, whose rugged and bare crests were almost confounded with the azure of the sky. The door of the venta opened, and a young officer came out singing, accompanied by a stout and jolly-looking monk; after them, a charming maiden of eighteen or nineteen, fair-haired and fragile, with blue eyes and golden hair, appeared on the threshold. "Come, come," the Captain said, for the young officer wore the marks of that grade, "we have lost too much time already, so to horse." "Hum!" the monk growled, "we have had hardly time to breakfast; why the deuce are you in such a hurry, Captain?" "Holy man," the officer went on with a laugh, "if you prefer remaining, you are at liberty to do so."