Thirst in the Desert:

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selves, and at each other. My wife repeatedly made signs to me to come near and take a sup from the bottle: but I dared not. My abstaining from even a drop could alone save the whole contents of the bottle to her and the children.

At last we arrived at a streamlet, so sluggish and muddy, that under more favourable circumstances we should have passed without noticing it; but faint from thirst as we were, and weary, we encamped here. The muddy stream was soon made muddier from our disturbance of it as we dipped and drank; and especially from the tramping of the thirsty donkeys. What a blessed thing is pain the instant after it is relieved. Think of his happiness who, after suffering for hours from a pair of pinching boots, or toothache, has just thrown off the one or cured the other, and has resigned himself to a chinchora or an easy chair. We rested-shading ourselves under some palm trees that grew thickly there, while some coffee was being made. After this refreshment we again started on our way, amusing ourselves by

listening to the guide's conversations with the carters returning from Soledad.

It was with much pleasure that at a turn of the road we welcomed a view of Angostura, as it presented itself, so broad and glistening in the sunlight, like a sea rather than a river, even in this its narrowest part.

We stopped at a posada in Soledad, kept by a lame womar., who was dragged about in a chair whenever she desired to move. Her daughter, a young woman of about twenty-seven, did the active part of the business of the house.

Soledad is on the northern bank (the left) of the Orinoco, and directly opposite to the city of Bolivar. It is a depôt for merchandise from and to the city. The young woman said that the town was dull just then, owing to there being no recent arrivals of wains and hampered mules. During their proper seasons the corn, rice, tobacco, cotton, and cheese, pigs, poultry, tallow, hides, hoofs and horns are brought down for Bolivar, and return stores are taken into the interior. Then there is some life in Soledad.

Business is then brisk and amusement plentiful. And as the wives and daughters frequently accompany the waggons and muleros, going over to Bolivar to select and purchase to the best advantage, there is no lack of fandangos and flirtations that end mostly by calling in the aid of the padre to seal what she frankly said she believed to be the happiest time in a woman's life. Poor thing! although industrious, and, as I think, kind-natured, she was very plain; and might have to wait a life-time in expectancy of a happiness not to be realised by her. Yet who knows but that she is now the contented wife of a good husband, and the happy mother of a goodly young family; for is it not written that "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all?"

The next morning, Saturday, the two men, M. Wilhelm and Mr M'Donald, bade us adieu, and with the guide went over to Bolivar.

The river rises and falls once in a twelvemonth,

and the mean difference is about forty-five feet. It was then low water, and all along the Soledad bank vineries of pumpkin, and musk, and watermelons were plentiful, which would ripen and be gathered in good time before the rising of the water. The alluvial deposit every year left on the sandy bank rendered it productive. It was a novel idea to me to think that high overhead of the sand on which I was then walking, and on which rich green foliage, and luscious melons were ripening in the sun;-a few months hence steamers and other large ships of burthen would be plying, and anchors would be let down, and the manati and kaiman, and other monsters of the water, would be browsing, or creeping, or swimming. A six months' tenure of the land is fairly given to each, men and fishes.

CHAPTER XXIX.

BOLIVAR.

ON Monday morning we left the Soledad shore in a wherry. The current of the river was very strong, and as there was no wind to sail us over, the men had very hard work. As we were nearing "El Piedra del Medio," which is a high rock, or mass of rocks, with one or two trees upon the top, and which serves as a metre of the rise and fall of the water of the river (which at its utmost is said to exceed 60 feet), and while our heads were raised looking up from almost underneath on to the mass of rocks high up in the air, our attention was called to a manati or vaca del mare (sea cow), as it browsed on the weeds, grasses, and other algæ of the great river; swimming so lazily and lightly as to convey no idea of its strength and capacity for fleetness. Kaimans also, the crocodiles of the West, with heads as