idly into the cold of the _tierra fria_, while a wreath
of white fog round the summit of a neighbouring mountain indicated the
approach of dawn. In the barrancas it was still dark night. Here and there
appeared heaps of snow, which became more numerous as the climbers
ascended, until at last the whole mountain was one field of ice. As the
daylight increased, a mass of snow-covered mountain appeared upon the
left, spreading out like a huge winding-sheet, while to the right a still
loftier peak caught the first beams of the morning sun. But the beams were
pale, and the tints grey; all around was mist and icy cold.

"_Por Dios!_" exclaimed Don Manuel; "Where is the Conde Carlos? Where are
Alonzo, Cosmo?"

"Forward!" commanded a voice.

"I ask where is the Conde Carlos?" repeated the young nobleman, who
remarked, to his horror, that the party, which had set out more than four
hundred strong, now consisted only of seventy Indians and twenty or thirty
dragoons. He had been unconscious, owing to the darkness and to his
agitation of mind, of the separation that had taken place upon the
plateau. No answer was vouchsafed to his question. They had arrived at the
edge of a deep precipice, which stopped their further progress.

"Lassos!" cried the same voice as before.

One of the Indians fastened the end of his lasso round his own body, gave
the ring at the other extremity to a comrade, and was lowered over the
precipice. A second lasso was made fast to the ring of the first, a third,
a fourth, a fifth were added in like manner, until the Indian had
disappeared in the fog, and it was only known by his shout when he had
found a footing. Another Indian, and another, followed in the same way,
with as much safety and speed as if they had been so many cotton bales let
down from the top floor of a warehouse.

"_Vuestra Senoria_," said one of the patriots to Don Manuel, pointing to
this new kind of ladder, and making a sign to an Indian. The next moment
the young nobleman also had vanished in the mist. Man followed man, and
the last who went down gave each of the five guides a cigar, laid his
finger on his lips, and hastened after his companions.

The descent thus strangely commenced, was continued for some time without
incident, and the sun was just rising above the mountains, when the
patriot detachment came in sight of a moderately deep barranca, along the
side of which stood a _rancho_, or Indian village, composed of doorless
a