*

We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and

towers

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth, white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's

leaning miracle.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,-
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,

*

Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.

Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar

In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed,
The house-dog on his paws outspread,
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall

A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,

And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
JOHN G. WHIttier.

Biography.-For biographical sketch of John Greenleaf Whittier, see page 83.

Notes.- Pisa's (Pee'să's) leaning miracle. At Pisa, Italy, there is a round, marble tower, 180 feet high, called the Leaning Tower, on account of its deviating fourteen feet from the perpendicular. Although this wonderful tower is apparently about to fall, it has stood firm for more than seven hundred years.

Silhouette (sil'oo et) is a shadow outline filled in with a dark color. A hundred years ago, the profile silhouettes of individuals were cut out of black paper, and were kept as likenesses. Humorous illustrations of the silhouette order are now common in pictorial papers.

Elocution — With what tone of voice should this poem be read ?

89.-THE RUBBER TREES OF THE AMAZON.

eon võľvu lī, climbing plants

with bell-shaped flowers.

är' bo res'çent, tree-like. ā'rùmş, lilies.

ěst'ū a ry, an arm of the sea.

măn' groves, certain tropical

trees.

a'gües, chills.

pre çîsè'ly, exactly.

eo ǎğ'u låtes, becomes thick.

Ascending the Mississippi from its mouth, one passes by four great tributaries—the Red, Arkansas, Ohio, and Missouri; the Missouri, in its turn, receives the Platte and Yellowstone, so that we can reckon altogether six branches which exceed seven hundred miles in length. This is a larger number than the Asiatic or African rivers possess.

The Niger has no large branches at all; the Nile has only three or four, which are almost dry during half of the year; the Yang-tse-kiang has no single branch as long as the Ohio; and so with the rest. In South America, the Parana receives the Uraguay and Paraguay, each as large as the Red River. So far, the comparison is favorable to the Mississippi.

Now glance at a map of the Amazon. There are at least sixteen tributaries that measure more than

seven hundred miles in length; the most of them exceed a thousand. Some of these great branches receive streams almost as large as themselves, and the lesser rivers that flow into the Amazon would count up a full hundred or more. King of rivers, the Amazon bears a princely train.

In studying the great valley of the Amazon, our first step will be to distinguish between the mainland and the flood-plain; we must separate these two in our minds as sharply as they are defined in nature. The main-land is always beyond reach of the floods, though it may be only a few inches above them; it has a foundation of older rock, which crops out in many places. The flood-plain, on the contrary, has clearly been formed by the river itself; its islands and flats are built up of mud and clay, with an occasional sand bank; but they are never stony, and only isolated points are a few inches above the highest floods.

Our first rambles will be among the islands and channels of the varzeas, or flood-plains, with their swampy forests, and great stretches of meadow, and half submerged plantations. Any one who is not blind must feel his soul moved within him by the marvelous beauty of the vegetation. Not a bit of ground is seen; straight up from the water the forest rises like a wall-dense, dark, impenetrable, a hundred feet of leafy splendor. And breaking out every-where from among the heaped-up masses are the palm-trees by thousands. For here the palms broad earth is their If palms, standing

hold court: nowhere else on the glory unveiled as we see it. alone, are esteemed the most beautiful of trees, what shall we say when their numbers are counted,

not by scores, nor hundreds, but by thousands, and all in a ground-work of such forest as is never seen outside of the tropics?

The scene is infinitely varied: sometimes the palm-trees are hidden, but even then the great rolling mass is full of wonderful changes, from the hundred or more kinds of trees that compose it; and again the palms hold undivided sway, or only shrubs and low climbing vines soften their splendor. Down by the water's edge the flowering convolvuli are mingled with shield-like leaves of the arborescent arums, and mangroves standing aloft on their stilt-like roots, where they are washed by the estuary tides.

The Indian pilot points out numbers of rubbertrees, and we learn to recognize their white trunks, and shining, bright-green foliage. This low tideregion is one of the most important rubber districts, and hundreds of natives are employed in gathering and preparing the crude gum. Occasionally we see their thatched huts along the shore, built on piles, and always damp, reeking, dismal, suggestive of agues and rheumatism; for the tidelowlands, glorious as they are from the river, are sodden marshes within, where many a rubber gatherer has found disease and death.

The rubber-trees are scattered through marshy forests, where we clamber over logs, and sink into pools of mud, and leap the puddles; where the mosquitoes are blood-thirsty, and nature is damp and dark and threatening; where the silence is unbroken by beast and bird-a silence that can be felt.

In the early morning, men and women come