At length the month of March arrived, and the rains abated. The torrents, ceasing to receive their aliments from the clouds--for, like the Nile, they are strictly διϊὲες--shrunk to their ordinary insignificance, the camp was immediately put in motion, and pushing onwards for a few leagues, they discovered a more convenient site on the acclivity of a hill, where they remained some time to recruit themselves and their cattle. Le Vaillant travelled for pleasure, and was gifted with the happy faculty of discovering at a glance its springs and sources. Near the site of his camp there was a small eminence, the summit of which was crowned with a diminutive grove, where the trees had so grown into each other that the whole seemed one solid mass of foliage. He immediately conceived the idea of transforming this thicket into a palace; and causing a covered entrance to be cut into the centre, he there hewed out two large square apartments, one of which was immediately converted into a study, and the other into a kitchen. If we keep out of sight the kitchen, and the share which art had in its formation, Spenser has admirably described this arbour, as well as the hill on which it stood: Right in the middest of that paradise There stood a stately mount, on whose round top A gloomy grove of myrtle-trees did rise, Whose shady boughs sharp steel did never lop, Nor wicked beasts their tender buds did crop. But like a girlond compassed the height, And from their fruitful sides sweet gum did drop, That all the ground, with precious dew bedight, Threw forth most dainty odours and most sweet delight. And in the thickest covert of that shade There was a pleasant arbour, not by art, But of the trees’ own inclination, made, Which knitting their rank branches, part to part, With wanton ivy-twine entrailed athwart, And eglantine and caprifole among, Fashioned above within their inmost part, That neither Phœbus’ beams could through them throng, Nor Æolus’ sharp blast could work them any wrong.