“Oh! it is the land where brightest hues
Gild sunset skies and glow in morning dews
Where flowers the fairest ever seem to bloom,
Of the world’s empire, to adorn the tomb.
Where blandest breezes on elastic wing,
Gladness and vigor to the bosom bring;
Where hang at once, within thy sunny bowers,
On citron trees, the fruitage and the flowers;
Where hearts are ardent as the sun’s they feel,
And buoyant as the gales that o’er them steal;
Where maiden’s love as close, as sweet will twine,
As cling the tendrils of their native vine;
Where the deep lustre of soft beauty’s eye
Transcends the brightness of its own clear sky.”
Godfrey’s “Cordelia.”
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
RAMON PAEZ.
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
TO
MORRIS KETCHUM, ESQ.,
THE
KIND AND CONSTANT FRIEND
TO THE
EXILED AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
It was my lot several years ago—I need not state how many—to be brought forth into this world amid the wild scenes which I propose to describe. Later in life I was fortunate enough to be sent by my parents to England, for the purpose of finishing my education under the tuition of the learned fathers at the College of Stonyhurst. While there, I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the inimitable author of “Wanderings in South America,” Charles Waterton, Esq., who years before had also been an inmate of that celebrated institution, and whose book became at once my favorite study, on account of the graphic descriptions it contains of animals and objects with which I was already familiar. The works of the distinguished traveller, Baron von Humboldt, who first made those regions known to the civilized world, next afforded me an endless source of scientific enjoyment, developing in me an early taste for the natural history and physical wonders of my native land.
On my return home, I immediately turned my steps toward