The Singer’s gracious and noble thoughts are reviving as the champagne-air of the mountain-top. His verse has the true heroic ring of such old ballads as:—
S’en assaut viens, devant ta lance, En mine, en échelle, en tous lieux, En prouesse les bons avance, Ta dame t’en aimera mieux.
And with this love and sympathy of mine mingles not a little gratitude. During how many hopeless days and sleepless nights Camões was my companion, my consoler, my friend;—on board raft and canoe; sailer and steamer; on the camel and the mule; under the tent and the jungle-tree; upon the fire-peak and the snow-peak; on the Prairie, the Campo, the Steppe, the Desert!
Where no conversable being can be found within a march of months; and when the hot blood of youth courses through the brain, Ennui and Nostalgia are readily bred, while both are fatal to the Explorer’s full success. And, preferring to all softer lines the hard life of Discovery-travel:—
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell, Where foot of mortal man hath never been;—
a career which combines cultivation and education with that resistless charm, that poetry-passion of the Unknown; whose joy of mere motion lightens all sorrows and disappointments; which aids, by commune with Nature, the proper study of Mankind; which enlarges the mental view as the hill-head broadens the horizon; which made Julian a saint, Khizr a prophet, and Odin a god: this Reiselust , I say, being my ruling passion, compelled me to seek a talisman against homesickness and the nervous troubles which learned men call Phrenalgia and Autophobia.
I found this talisman in Camões.