Year: 1875

blaze Of flowers from top to bottom /;
leaves big enough TO wrap you up like
a blanket; tree ferns big a. a table
cloth, all gIittering like the finest sill
yer lace (; humming birds and monkeys
and parrots, and butterflies as broad
as the palm OF yonr hand water
falls sheer down over great black
precipices a Thousand feet high and
far away behind the everlasting
mountains, piled one ab0ye the other
till they seemed 10 go right up to
heaven. Among all the enormous
things, We eight men, being big and
strong as We were, seemed of no
more account than a lot of ants
crawling on blade OF grass and /
think / never felt so small in my life
as did then.


However, I hadn't much leisure to
think about il at the time, for you
can't expect fellow to have muen OF
an eye for scenery when hes hacking
his way through a great cobweb OF
branches too thick for the light to get
through, with his boots full os gnats,
and the damp vapor-bath heat of the


woods melting him away bit by bit,
fifty priekles going into him at once,
thorn bush scalping him from above
and q creeper tripping him up down
below.


And so we hammered along, till at
last we worked up the plateau and saw
the great lake spreading away before
US as far as ever we could see. We
weren't long OF making out the three
eOrnered crag nor the shadow neither,
n ryas mat Nuh
there, as IL o. purpose for rs; aud
once we'd made it out we hardly
waited 10 take breath before we were
at It tooth and nail.


The first day was a regular blank
one till just towards sundOwn, and
then the Portuguese screeched out sud-
denly that he'd got something heavy.
helped him to haul up the pan, and
there, sure enough, was q bar OF
gold over foot long, and pretty nigh
as thick as my two fingers here. At
that we all shouted at once, and went
at 1t harder than ever and L really
think our chaps would have worked
all night but Seth stopped 'em. He
told ;em that the gold wouldn't run
away, and that If they put on too
much steam at first they'd just knock
themselves up before they were half
through, and that they'd better just
light fire and get dried, and have
some supper, and fix up some kind Of
shelter against the dew, and then
start fair next morning. And so they
did.


The next day and the next aud the
next after that we kept bringing it up
in handfuls-gOld circlets and chains
and necklaces and ingots without end.
But on the fifth day found the pro-
visions getting so low that was rath-
er scared, for.up here there was no
game OF any sort, there being no veg
citation at that height for the game to
live on. So we held council of war.
Our chaps had got the gold fever so
into their blood by the time that L
verify believe they'd have kept dig
ging on till they died of hunger; but
Seth and !, who were little cooler,
talked them over at last. We told
'em that we'd got enough already to
make Us all rich as Jews; that we
must all starve if we didn't replenish
our stock somehow that ten to one
the "find" was played out land, in
deed, none of us had taken q grain all
that mOrning) aud that in case the
lake was always there, and they could
come back and try again whenever
they liked. So, bit by bit, we worked
'em round, and all started to 90 back
together.


We'd hard work of it the first part
of the way, for our loads were pretty
heavy, and stumbling In and out of
these great rocks was no joke, let
alone that the five days work had
taken it out of US more than we ex-
pected. One of tho Spaniards got a
bad fall, and not one of us but had his
bruise to show. But at last we got
over the barren bit and found our
selves fairly down among the woods
again and then I began to be jolly,
this was the end of it. But
it wssn't-it was only the begin
ming