beyond the savannah, the whole western sky changed to a delicate
rose colour that had the appearance of rose-coloured smoke blown
there by some far off-wind, and left suspended--a thin, brilliant
veil showing through it the distant sky beyond, blue and
ethereal. Flocks of birds, a kind of troupial, were flying past
me overhead, flock succeeding flock, on their way to their
roosting-place, uttering as they flew a clear, bell-like chirp;
and there was something ethereal too in those drops of melodious
sound, which fell into my heart like raindrops falling into a
pool to mix their fresh heavenly water with the water of earth.

Doubtless into the turbid tarn of my heart some sacred drops had
fallen--from the passing birds, from that crimson disk which had
now dropped below the horizon, the darkening hills, the rose and
blue of infinite heaven, from the whole visible circle; and I
felt purified and had a strange sense and apprehension of a
secret innocence and spirituality in nature--a prescience of some
bourn, incalculably distant perhaps, to which we are all moving;
of a time when the heavenly rain shall have washed us clean from
all spot and blemish. This unexpected peace which I had found
now seemed to me of infinitely greater value than that yellow
metal I had missed finding, with all its possibilities. My wish
now was to rest for a season at this spot, so remote and lovely
and peaceful, where I had experienced such unusual feelings and
such a blessed disillusionment.

This was the end of my second period in Guayana: the first had
been filled with that dream of a book to win me fame in my
country, perhaps even in Europe; the second, from the time of
leaving the Queneveta mountains, with the dream of boundless