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nor had so disputed a victory been won on the plains watered by the Acaraú and the Camoçim. The valour was equal on both sides, and neither nation would have been victor, had not the God of War already decided to give these shores to the race of the white warrior allied to the Pytiguáras.

Immediately after triumphing, the Christian returned to the sea-beach where he had built his Wigwam. He felt anew in his soul the thirst of love, and he trembled to think that Iraçéma might have deserted the place which had formerly been peopled by happiness.

The Christian loved the Daughter of the Forest once more, as at first, when it appeared that time could not exhaust his heart. But a few short suns sufficed to wither these flowers of a heart exiled from its country.

The Imbú,^[1] son of the mountains, if it spring up in the plains where the wind or the birds have borne its seed, finding good and fresh ground, may perhaps one day dome itself with green foliage and bear flowers. But a single breath of the sea suffices to wither it; the leaves strew the ground, the blossoms are carried away by the breeze.

Like the Imbú on the plains was the heart of the white warrior in the savage land. Friendship and love had accompanied him and sustained him for a time; now, however, far from his home and his people, he felt himself in a desert. The friend and the wife did not suffice any longer to his existence, full of great and noble projects of ambition.

He passed the suns, once so short, now so long, on the beach, listening to the moaning of the wind and the sobbing of the waves. His eyes, lost in the

immensity of the horizon, sought, but in vain, to espy