THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN.
"Oneiza!"
"My love—my lord!"
"Look upon me with thy lustrous eyes till I see my image dancing in them. O my beautiful, my beloved! Tell me, Oneiza! when the song of the nightingale warbles across the lake, what dost thou think of then?"
"Of thee—of thee, my adored one!"
"And when the stars are glittering in heaven like sapphires in thine ebon hair—what then, Oneiza?"
"Of thee—still of thee!"
"When the humming-bird is stooping o'er the chalice of the flower,—when the sweet azalea blossom bursts brightly from the bower,—when the very breeze is loaded with odour and perfume, and the murmur of the hidden brook comes singing through the gloom,—when the fire-flies light the thicket like spangles struck from gold,—when all the buds that love the morn their tiny cups unfold,—when the dew is falling warmest on blade, and leaf, and tree—where is thy soul, Oneiza?"
"With thee, my love! with thee!"
Never, surely, since the first blight fell upon Eden, did the virgin moon look down upon a lovelier or a more innocent pair!! Manco Capl was of the race of the Incas, whom tradition asserted to be the direct offspring of the sun. But a shrewd physiological observer would have had no difficulty in recognising the traces of a descent more human but not less illustrious. The clustering curls, the dark eye, the aquiline nose, and the full underlip, of the young Inca, bore a striking resemblance to that ideal of beauty which far transcends the product of the Grecian chisel. They were the features of a prince of the Captivity—of a leader of the most ancient race that ever issued from the defiles of the Caucasus. For it is not to Assyria, or even to Thibet, that we must look for a solution of the great mystery attendant upon the departure of the Ten Tribes; They were not destined to remain by the streams of Babylon, hewers of wood and drawers of water in an unkind and alien country. The Israelitish spirit, which in former times had expanded to the strength of a Sampson, would not brook such a degradation, and the second mighty pilgrimage of the nation was even more prolonged than the first. At length they reached a land of rest and refuge;—Dan took possession of Mexico, and Zebulon was located in Peru.