High among their branches,
the red and yellow mockingbirds still build their hanging nests,
uncouth storks and tree-porcupines cling above, and the spotted deer
and the tapir drink from the sluggish stream below. The night is still
made noisy with a thousand cries of bird and beast; and the stillness
of the sultry noon is broken by the slow tolling of the _campanero_, or
bell-bird, far in the deep, dark woods, like the chime of some lost
convent. And as Nature is unchanged there, so apparently is man; the
Maroons still retain their savage freedom, still shoot their wild game
and trap their fish, still raise their rice and cassava, yams and
plantains,--still make cups from the gourd-tree and hammocks from the
silk-grass plant, wine from the palm-tree's sap, brooms from its
leaves, fishing-lines from its fibres, and salt from its ashes. Their
life does not yield, indeed, the very highest results of spiritual
culture; its mental and moral results may not come up to the level of
civilization, but they rise far above the level of slavery. In the
changes of time, the Maroons may yet elevate themselves into the one,
but they will never relapse into the other.
CIRCUMSTANCE.
She had remained, during all that day, with a sick neighbor,--those
eastern wilds of Maine in that epoch frequently making neighbors and
miles synonymous,--and so busy had she been with care and sympathy that
she did not at first observe the approaching night.
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