The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1875-01-02
THE PACIFIC
SECOND PART.
CANoENs N AFRICA.

CANOESS IN AFRICA.
ITO The true man the thing that he hopes to do
always offers some compensation for the thing
that he ceases to enjoy ~ And so our Poet,
who had brooded and agonized over a tender hope,
and had given up his soul TO sweet passion was
not in despair when cut of from bis prospect of
bliss. His nature though tender, was not one to
keep open an everlasting fount Of tears and to
whine for sympathy. lie buckled on steel and
brass, and the well greaEed hero was one of the
foremost in the fierce Morisco wars, under the
Leadership of that distinguished Captain in
African warfare, Don John, Of whom the poet
warrior speaks in one of his sonnets saying he
was a King,-in every act a King. (2)
HE LOSES HIS RIGHT EYE.
at one time we find our hero charging the
Moslem under the holy contested walls of Ceuta,
that had been so gloriously won by the lIlustrious
Prince Henry. Again we find him battling with
the Corsairs of Barbary in a naval engagement
of Gibraltar. Then under the walls of TaDgiers
he wins more laurels Of war. And at one of
these places, (3) he receives a disastrous wound,
that mutilates his face, destroys his right eye, and
robs him Of ell his former comeliness. And he
bitterly deplores his lOss-not so much on account
of any deficiency in the exercise of an important
sense, as for fear that his princess at home might
on seeing him again lose her interest in the shat
tered and disfgured man.
LOVE AND SLAUGHTER.
Perhaps his doubts and fears were unworthy of
his love; but we find him throughout this fierce
and bloody African campaign, (where he with
has comrades, that were following the heroic Don
John waded in carnage,) i~ndulging in a pathos of
utterance, that is a marvel in its contrast to the
terrible scenes of his life, and shows forth in him
a passion of soul such as was never revealed by
any other poet. a distinguished Englishman (4)
Las shown US in his story how he could pursue
literary studies amid the carousal and coarseness
of a common soldiers bivonae; and we find q
Caesar writing his commentaries amid all the ac-
t~ivities of a campaign but here is a warrior
whose hand is grimed with the gore and dust of
conflict, who can during the lulls of the storm of
battle, sit down and write thus to a girl, whom
lie had only known as an ideal, and worshipped
from afar. -Ilrrr -.r#- H.L u l4l
When the declining sun gives way
And shadows sail along the green,
wander silently.
Dear are the dreams that bless my view,
For Whom have ,nrun@ @1 M sT Re tear.
So on, so teuderiy.
see her as with graceful care
she binds her eraids Of sunny hairs
! feel her harP's meiodl9ns thrill
Re-echod faithfully.
meet her mild and quiet eve.
Drink the warm spirit OF her sigh,
see young love beating IN her breast, a.
God knows how fervently.
Such are my hours Of dear delight,
And morn but makes me long for night,
And think how swift the minutes hew,
When last amongst the dropping dew.
WANDERED silently.
The life of the Portuguese campaigner in
Africa, during the wars of the sixteenth century,
was as aIduous and self reliant as that of the Ro-
man soldier under Regulus or Scipo. The Lusi-
tanian warrior had 10 prepare his own cake of
farina, and if he got q broil from a carcase be had
to hank the proves of his own right hand, and
the fortune of the chase or of war. But let us
not suppose that he would have been a better
warrior with a better commissariat; as we have
seen men stand we'll to their guns who were fed
daily on tinn'd dainties, and who had milk
punches ladled to them from ladies' hands; but
we may think that the well fed, fat campaigner
of modern days might have less inspiration of
poesy in him, than the hardy adventuring warrior
of olden times, who carried his commissariat and
sanitary commission in his own stout heart and
strong right arm. And Camoens must have had
his heart ribbed with triple steel in order to have
preserved amid the horrors and strifes of his life
in African deserts, the sweetness and tenderness
of a nature that seemed fitted only to have been
blessed in his loves boudoir.
The poet tells us in his great song of the Lusiad
how his breast was steeled
"By vigilance; by glorious Eeats perform'd
In Poishd mail; By Drawing fearful storms
or heat and cold in regions sheterIess;
BY resignation to putrescent food
season'd by famine and impending death;
~ iG %ien o f eb Pela hIPss' and To a eo1sSencs.
While from the eannOn's mouth The fatal ball
STii thus the breast with noble ffrsitude
Is steerd"--(9
But how the tenderness of it was preserved
even unto the last day of a long and tempestuous
life, we must suppose that the flame of love which
had SO suddenly and wonderfully warmed and
lighted up his existence was never afterwards for
one moment quenched.
DOUBT. -
Of course there is doubt about everything
especially about anything that is glorious, but
hardly of anything evil in the world. There is
doubt about the inspiring lives of William Tell
and Joan of Arc, but none about the damnable
existences Of a Nero of Rome, or n Catherine of
Russia. Every beautiful thing is doubted, and so
the truth of the sweet idyl of Camoens and Cate
rina is doubted yet not the historical fact of two
such persons having loved, but the genuineness of
the love of the lady is doubted; and indeed there
are writer's who say, that the beautiful DOna de
Ataide fully acquiesced in the plan of her rela-
tives to have removed from Lisbon Der pursuing
adyenturer, and so relieve her from an impassioned,
impOrtuning, and disturbing presence. (6)
But happily there is no proof of this, and Ii it is
mainly an inference that Is based upon the repre-
sensations of interested relatives; who say that