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IRAÇÉMA.

mountains, and the turtle-dove cooed forth her first lament from the forest depths, they sighted upon the plain beneath them the great Taba ;[1] farther on, hanging as it were from a rock, under the shade of the lofty Joaseiro,[2] the wigwam of the Pagé.[3]

The ancient man was seated at the doorway upon a mat of Carnaúba, smoking and meditating on the sacred rites of Tupan.[4] The gentle breath of the breeze fluttered his hair — long, thin, and white as flocks of wool. So statue-like was he, that life only appeared in his hollow, sunken eyes and deep wrinkles.

The Pagé descried, nevertheless, from afar the two forms, advancing, he thought, towards a solitary tree, whose dense foliage was casting a long shadow adown the valley before him.

When the travellers entered the deep gloom of the wood, his eye, made, like the tiger՚s, for darkness, recognised Iraçéma, and saw that she was followed by a young warrior of a strange race and a far-off land.

The Tabajára[5] tribes beyond Ibyapába were full of a new race of warriors, pale as the flowers of the storm,[6] and coming from the remotest shores to the banks of the Mearim.[7] The old man thought that it was one of these warriors who trod his native ground.

Calmly he awaited.

  1. ↑ Taba, a village settlement.
  2. ↑ Joaseiro, a tree which produces the joaz fruit, the jujube.
  3. ↑ Pagé, priest, Druid, magician, soothsayer, or fetish-man.
  4. ↑ Tupan, the Great Spirit—Thunder, and, since their con-
    version, the Consecrated Host of the Tupy Indians.
  5. ↑ Ibyapaba, the Serra or mountain range which bounds the province of Ceará, and separates it from Piauhy.
  6. ↑ In the original, alvos como flores de borrasca. They speak of white clouds announcing a storm, and this is, literally, "white as the flowers of the storm."
  7. ↑ Mearim, a river which rises in Maranhão, and empties itself into the ocean.
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