“The description of the birds is very animated and interesting; but how far does the gentle reader imagine the campanero may be heard, whose size is that of a jay? Perhaps 300 yards. Poor innocent, ignorant reader! unconscious of what Nature has done in the forests of Cayenne, and measuring the force of tropical intonation by the sounds of a Scotch duck! The campanero may be heard three miles!—this single little bird being more powerful than the belfry of a cathedral, ringing for a new dean—just appointed on account of shabby politics, small understanding, and good family!
“It is impossible to contradict a gentleman who has been in the forests of Cayenne; but we are determined, as soon as a campanero is brought to England, to make him toll in a public place, and have the distance measured.” [↑]
“In angry sea, in sudden storm,
I thee invoke, our star benign.”
[21] Compare the reception of Ulysses by Eumæus, in the fourteenth book of the Odyssey, where the old servant of the wandering hero is made to say to his unknown master:—
“Guest! If one much worse
Arrived here than thyself, it were a curse
To my poor means, to let a stranger taste