Page:RMBallantyne--Martin Rattler.djvu/145



T is pleasant, when the sun is bright, and the trees are green, and when flowering shrubs and sweet- smelling tropical trees scent the balmy atmosphere at eventide, to lie extended at full length in a canoe, and drop easily, silently, yet quickly down the current of a noble river, under the grateful shadow of overhanging foliage ; and to look lazily up at the bright blue sky which appears in broken patches among the verdant leaves, or down at the river in which that bright sky and those green leaves are reflected, or aside at the mud-banks where greedy vultures are searching for prey and lazy alligators are basking in the sun ; and to listen, the while, to the innumerable cries and notes of monkeys, toucans, parrots, orioles, bemtevi or fly- catchers, white- winged and blue chatterers, and all the mvriads of birds and beasts that cause the forests of Brazil, above all other forests in the world probably, to resound with the gleeful songs of animated nature!