Page:Iracéma, the honey-lips (1886).djvu/114
The first Cearense, still in his cradle, thus became an Emigrant from his Fatherland. Did this announce the destinies of the race to be?
Poty with his warriors awaited on the river-banks. The Christian had promised to return; every morning he climbed the sand-hill and strained his eyes, hoping for a friendly sail to whiten the sea-horizon.
Martim at last returned to the land which had once seen his happiness, and which now sees his bitter regret. When his foot pressed the hot white sand, there spread through his frame a fire which burned his heart: it was the fire of consuming memory.
The flame was extinguished only when he stood on the place where his wife slept, because at that moment his heart overflowed like the trunk of the Jetahy[1] in the great heats, and refreshed his grief with a shower of tears.
Many warriors of his race accompanied the white Chief to found with him the Christian Mayri. There came also a Priest of his Faith, black-robed, to plant the Cross upon this savage soil.
Poty was the first who knelt at the foot of the Sacred Wood. He would not allow anything again to part himself and his white brother; for this reason, as they had but one heart, he wished that both might have the same God.
He received in baptism the name of the Saint[2] whose day it was, and of the King he was about to serve; besides these two, his own translated into the tongue of his new brethren.
His fame increased, and it is still the pride of the land in which he first saw the light.
The Mayri which Martim founded on the river-banks within the shores of Ceará flourished. The
word of the true God budded in the savage land, and