In the morning a song our boatmen addressed to the Virgin roused me from my sleep. It was a strain of plaintive notes in a few simple but most expressive modulations. Several years later I heard them again, sung by the Mexican miners in the subterraneous chapel of the quicksilver mine of New Almaden in California, and I never shall forget the deep emotion felt on both occasions, so widely different in every other respect. In the latter the scene passed in a narrow excavation before a little altar cut out of the natural rock, on which, before a gilded image of the Virgin, two thin tallow candles were casting their scanty light over the forms of fifteen or twenty men calling down the blessing of Heaven on their day of work in the interior of the mountain. In the former, it was in the brightness and splendor of a morning of which no description can convey a full idea to one who has had no experience in the most favored regions of a tropical climate. The sun was just rising, and as the first rays, gilding the glassy leaves of the forest, fell upon the bronze-colored bodies of our men, letting the naked forms of their athletic frames appear in all the contrast of light and shade, while accents plaintive and imploring strained forth from their lips, I thought to hear the sacred spell by which, unconscious of its power, these men were subduing their own half-savage natures. At once the same song was repeated from behind a projecting corner of the bank, and other voices joined those of our crew in the sacred notes. Two canoes, covered from our view, had anchored near us during the night. The song at last died away in the wilderness. A silent prayer--our anchor was raised, and, with a wild shout of the crew, twelve oars simultaneously struck the water. The sun was glittering in the river. The tops of the trees were steeped in light, monkeys were swinging in the branches, splendid macaws flew in pairs from bank to bank; all around exhibited the glory and brightness of superabundant nature. Near the mouth of the river, as far up as the higher end of its delta, the banks are almost on the water's level, overgrown with reeds, mangroves, and a low species of palm-tree, the latter forming extensive thickets in the swamps. After a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles the land gradually becomes a little higher, and steep embankments of a brown or reddish clay rise to some ten or twenty feet above the water. The low palm thickets of the swampy region disappear, and a vegetation of splendid trees, mostly exogenous, overhung with blooming vines, takes their place. Flowery garlands, swung from branch to branch, hang over the stream, while now and then the slender shaft of one of the tallest species of the palm tribe wafts its little crown of feathery leaves high over the gorgeous masses of the heavier foliage.