very beautiful; black were her eyes and intoxicatingly sweet like those of the Aztecs; her skin firm and golden as that of those who bathe in the Meschacebé; celestial her voice as that of the shkok, which sings its serenades in the zapote groves of Mayapán; and her little feet were as graceful and fine as those of Antillean princesses, who pass their lives swinging in hammocks, which seem to be woven by fairies. When Starei appeared one morning on the strand, seated on the red shell of a sea-turtle, she seemed a living pearl and all adored her as a daughter of god, of Dimivan-caracol. The priestess of the tribe prayed all night near the sacred fire, in which smouldered leaves of the intoxicating tobacco, and at last heard the divine voice, which resounded within the heart of the great stone fetish, saying: “Kill her not; guard and protect her; she is the daughter of the Gulf and the Gulf was her cradle; God grant that she return there.”
Starei completed her thirteen years and the old and the young, prophets and warriors, caciques and slaves, abandoned their villages, temples,