Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/209

 1 85 1.] A DESCRIPTION OF JAVlTA. 179

For music they've small drums and reed-made fifes, And vocal chants, monotonous and shrill, To which they'll dance for hours without fatigue. The children of small growth are naked, and The boys and men wear but a narrow cloth. How I delight to sec those naked boys ! Their well-form'd limbs, their bright, smooth, red-brown skin, And every motion full of grace and health ; And as they run, and race, and shout, and leap, Or swim and dive beneath the rapid stream, Or, all bareheaded in the noonday sun, Creep stealthily, with blowpipe or with bow, To shoot small birds or swiftly gliding fish, I pity English boys ; their active limbs Cramp'd and confined in tightly-fitting clothes; Their toes distorted by the shoemaker, Their foreheads aching under heavy hats, And all their frame by luxury enervate. But how much more I pity English maids, Their waist, and chest, and bosom all confined By that vile torturing instrument called stays !

"And thus these people pass their simple lives. They are a peaceful race ; few serious crimes Are known among them ; they nor rob nor murder, And all the complicated villanies Of man called civilised are here unknown. Yet think not I would place, as some would do, The civilised below the savage man; Or wish that we could retrograde, and live As did our forefathers ere Caesar came. ;

'Tis true the miseries, the wants and woes, Thepoverty, the crimes, the broken hearts, The intense mental agonies that lead Some men to self-destruction, some To end their days within a madhouse cell, The thousand curses that gold brings upon us, The long death-struggle for the means to live, — All these the savage knows and suffers not. But then the joys, the pleasures and delights, That the well-cultivated mind enjoys ; The appreciation of the beautiful In nature and in art ; the boundless range Of pleasure and of knowledge books afford ; The constant change of incident and scene That makes us live a life in every year ; — All these the savage knows not and enjoys not. Still we may ask, ' Does stern necessity Compel that this great good must co-exist For ever with that monstrous mass of ill ?