22 EARLY PLEASURES.

“From my earliest days my parents, who could
not live without me, and were often undertaking
tedious journeys to the farthest part of the colony,
took me with them. Thus my first steps were in
the desert, and I was almost bornasavage. When
reason began to dawn, my inclinations soon mani-
fested themselves, and my parents aided to their
utmost these first indications of curiosity. Under
such good preceptors, I daily enjoyed fresh pleasures
afforded by those natural objects to which all my
studies pointed.

‘Soon a desire of imitation, the favourite passion
of infancy, gave impetuosity, I might say impa-
tience, to my amusements. TIlattered by self-love,
I imagined I likewise ought to have a cabinet of
natural history ; and without loss of time declared
war against caterpillars, butterflies, scarabeoi, and,
in a word, all sorts of insects.

‘‘Thus every day I saw my collection of specimens
accumulate, which I valued beyond measure, as
they were all of my own procuring. So far it was
all enjoyment, and I had not yet felt the obstacles
that present themselves between enterprise and suc-
cess. In one of our excursions we had killed a mon-
key. It was a female, and carried a young one on
her back, which was not wounded. We took them
both up, and on our return to the plantation the
young one had not yet left the back of its mother,