waters of Israel, or rivers of Damascus; or perhaps moved in some mysterious way by the remembrance of the chestnut forests, the old grey stone-roofed houses, and the wind whistling through the pine woods of some wild valley of Navarre. At the old Spaniard’s house a difficulty cropped up with our p. 31men. I having told a man to catch a horse which looked a little wild, he answered he was not a horse-breaker, and I might ride the beast myself. I promptly did so, and asked him if he knew what a wild horse was, and if it was not true that horses which could be saddled without tying their hind legs were tame, and the rest laughing at him, he drew his knife, and running at me, found himself looking down the barrel of a pistol which my partner with some forethought had produced. This brought things to a crisis, and they all left us, with a hundred horses on our hands. Several Brazilians having volunteered, we took them, bought a tame horse accustomed to carry packs, procured a bullock, had it killed, and the meat “jerked”; and making bags out of the hide, filled them with food, for, as the Spaniard said, “in the country you intend to cross you might as well be amongst Moors, for even money will not serve to get a piece of beef.” A kindly soul the Spaniard, his name has long escaped me, still he was interesting as but the truly ignorant can ever be. The world to him was a great mystery, as it is even to those who know much more than he; but all the little landmarks of the narrow boundaries of his life he had by heart; and they sufficed him, as the great world itself cannot suffice those who, by living in its current, see its muddiness.

p. 30

p. 31

So one day told another, and each night found us on horseback riding round the drove. Through p. 32forest, over baking plain, up mountain paths, through marshes, splashing to the saddle-flaps, by lone “fazendas,” and again through herds of cattle dotting the plain for miles, we took our way. Little straw huts, each with a horse tied day and night before them, were our fairway marks. Day followed night without adventure but when a horse suddenly threw its rider and a Brazilian peon uncoiled his lasso, and with a jangling of spurs against the stirrups, sprang into life, and in a moment the long snaky rope flew through the air and settled round the runaway just underneath his ears. Once in a clearing, as we plodded on, climbing the last barrier of the mountain range, to emerge upon the district called “Encima de la Sierra,” a deer appeared jumping into the air, and coming down again on the same spot repeatedly, the Brazilians said that it was fighting with a snake, for 

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