The Gavelyte, February 1912

CEDAl<.\'lLLE COLLEGE 262 quiet, the calm, the awe, as some unseen furce drove us on thru the rolling wave of a re tful equatorial sea . The tars cam..: darting on from out an unseen realm and moved themselves above as watch towers in the night. Thu standing under a southern Hea i en much o( t :1e bitterne s in my h ea rt gently oozed away. And altho 1 did not know it then, nature had started her work and before the summer sh )U\d at last pass aw:ty l at last was to be a man. The next morning we were steaming up the Amazon. We could see nutbing save a pathless, inpenetrable forest. At the river's edge a coo– tinuou mass of verdure, straight as rli!ed , rising on both sid es like palisades in line, enveloped in g lcom rit their base, and expanding on , an d up unti l o,·erhead the majest ic sunlight lit up their frowning brow. As time wore on 1 noticed tha t in that tropical land all life- vegetable and animd l-had a tendency to creep and climp. It was a strauge sight to se e the flowers a nd fruit of the forest trees, stanJing out, exposed to the sun li ght and heat, far above the dark dampness of the river's bank-within the forest's golden crown an<l leafy domes which were lock ed together by twisting, twining vines. No wonder my delight was boundless. Uncle Bill was right. There was thous– ands uf acres of the finest timber in the world to be gotten for a song. But I was not to see the reality of hi dream until I came to the Great Pampas– that extensive level district in Peru-covered with Primeval fo rests and reach– ing out into the immense grassy, treeless plains of rgentine R epubl ic. H e re wa where my work began and to day it is on e of the gre.Hest stock produc– ing countries of the world. Here to a lover of nature - the charm - the m .trvelous sights of the meadow lands is unspeakable. And a~ it is written of a summer morn ing on the Pampas. ''The young sun floods the low and perfect ly level horizon wit h a flu h of pink and yellow light. The firy disc emerges out of what seems a sea of verdure, all burned and browned though every thing be in real ity, and in its slanting rays the tip of each blade of grass, the giant thistles with their rose-purple crowns, the graceful g lass-like panicles ot Pampa grass, just touched by the breeze and all glittering\\ ith dew, undulate before the eye like the uccessive sparkling line3 that mark tlie lazy rol l of the deep in th e dawn of a tropical calm. ln the west the vaoors of nigh t have not entirely rolled away, while down in the deep depres iuns and over the reed-fenced lagunas a thin blue mist still lingers and mingles deliciously with the various subdued tints of brown and green around. This tender touality lasts but a very short time. The sun hooting upward with a speed force that at once cumplett'ly transforms the picture; the scorching agencies of li ght re– , ealing it in its true parched colors and reducing it to a burning arch abov e, and a scorching and featur ~les flat below. The £re h, rippling ocean runs into a weary wilderness, staring 11p at a breathless, pitiless sky ." Looking up•Jn this awe-inspired solitude but thats could not help turning to an eternity . At times it made me lone ome home. ick-at other it would fill me with a deep and yet pleasaut sadness. I thot of the people about me-compelled to tliiuk uf their condition-of tlie al, ·olute Catlwlic tyranny. I saw and heard tlie patlietir appeal of parentless cliildren- of enslaved womanhood and