Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 01
Page 10
The opening up of these Catacombs has brought to light many most interesting relics of primitive Christianity. In these Christian cemeteries and places of worship there are signs not only of the deep emotion and hope with which they buried their dead, but also of their simple forms of worship and the festive joy with which they commemorated the Nativity of Christ. On the rock-hewn tombs these primitive Christians wrote the thoughts that were most consoling to themselves, or painted on the walls the figures which gave them the most pleasure. The subjects of these paintings are for the most part taken from the Bible, and the one which illustrates the earliest and most universal of these pictures, and exhibits their Christmas joy, is "The Adoration of the Magi."
As we had now been four entire days without eating anything at all, I thought it was high time to open the valuable tin of anchovies--the only one in our possession. We had a terrible disappointment when I opened the tin. I had purchased it in S. Manoel from Mr. Barretto. To our great distress we discovered that instead of food it contained merely some salt and a piece of slate. This was a great blow to us. The box was a Brazilian counterfeit of a tin of anchovies. How disheartening to discover the fraud at so inopportune a moment! I had reserved the tin until the last as I did not like the look of it from the outside. We kept the salt--which was of the coarsest description.
More interesting to me than the river itself were the wonderful effects of the ever-changing light in the sky. I saw no more the wonderful radiations which had given me so much pleasure in Matto Grosso, but we beheld here a great haze of delicate tones up to a great height and a light blue sky above it. The clouds seemed to possess no well-defined form, but were more like masses of mist, the edges blending gradually with the blue of the sky. Only to the west was there an attempt at globular formation in the clouds. The clouds of heavy smoke which rose and rolled about over the landscape helped to render the otherwise monotonous scene a little more picturesque.
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