n leaping with a
grand anthem adown the great solemn rocks which lie along its beautiful
pathway. A sunny opening at the head of the ditch is a garden of
perfumed shrubbery and many-tinted flowers, all garlanded with the
prettiest vines imaginable, and peopled with an infinite variety of
magnificent butterflies. These last were of every possible color, pink,
blue and yellow, shining black splashed with orange, purple flashed
with gold, white, and even green. We returned about three in the
evening, loaded with fragrant bundles, which, arranged in jars,
tumblers, pitchers, bottles, and pails, (we are not particular as to
the quality of our vases in the mountains, and love our flowers as well
in their humble chalices as if their beautiful heads lay against a
background of marble or porcelain,) made the dark old cabin a bower of
beauty for us.

Shortly after our arrival, a perfectly deafening volley of shouts and
yells elicited from my companion the careless remark that the customary
sabbath-day's fight was apparently more serious than usual. Almost as
he spoke there succeeded a deathlike silence, broken in a minute after
by a deep groan at the corner of the cabin, followed by the words,
"Why, Tom, poor fellow, are you really wounded?" Before we could reach
the door, it was burst violently open by a person who inquired
hurriedly for the Doctor, who, luckily, happened at that very moment to
be approaching. The man who called him then gave us the following
excited account of what had happened. He said that in a melee between
the Americans and the foreigners, Domingo, a tall, majestic-looking
Spaniard, a perfect type of the novelistic bandit of Old Spain, had
stabbed Tom Somers, a young Irishman, but a naturalized citizen of the
United States, and that, at the very moment, said Domingo, with a
Mexicana hanging upon his arm, and brandishing threateningly the long,
bloody knife with which he had inflicted the wound upon his victim, was
parading up and down the street unmolested. It seems that when Tom
Somers fell the Americans, being unarmed, were seized with a sudden
panic and fled. There was a rumor (unfounded, as it afterwards proved)
to the effect that the Spaniards had on this day conspired to kill all
the Americans on the river. In a few moments, however, the latter
rallied and made a rush at the murderer, who immediately plunged into
the river and swam across to Missouri Bar. Eight or ten shots were
fired at him while in