then the frightful scene will begin, from which you cannot escape."

There was much good sense in what they said, and there can be no doubt
that it was most imprudent of us to embark in a little frail canoe,
and to make a trip over a lake inhabited by such numbers of caymans,
and especially since it was to be feared that the lake did not supply
fish enough to satisfy their voracity; and of course when enraged by
hunger they were more to be dreaded.

But we were never deterred by dangers or difficulties; so, taking
no account of the prognostics of my prudent Indians, we, while they
were delivering their long speeches, had lashed together two canoes
for greater security.

We had not proceeded many yards from the bank, when we all experienced
feelings of alarm, attributable, no doubt, to the expectation of
danger being immediate, as well as to the aspect of the place which
presented itself to our view.

We were down in the deepest part of a gulf, surrounded by lofty
and precipitous mountains, which were externally covered with very
thick vegetation. They, on all sides, presented a barrier, through
which it was impossible to pass. The shadows which they cast over
the water, at the extreme point of the lake, produced the effect of
half darkness, which, in conjunction with the silence prevailing in
that dismal solitude, gave it an aspect so dreary and saddening,
as to produce in us most painful feelings; each of us as it were,
struck with terror, kept his thoughts to himself, and no one spoke.

Our canoes went on, moving farther and farther from the brink from
which we had embarked; and it glided easily over the glassy sheet of
water, which is never agitated by even the roughest gales, and does not
receive the rays of the sun except when that luminary is at the zenith.

The silence in which we were absorbed was suddenly broken by the
appearance of a cayman, which raised its hideous head, and opened
its enormous jaws, as if about to swallow the canoes, as it darted
after us.

The moment was come; the grand drama announced by the Indians was
about to be realised, or all our fears would be dissipated without any
delay. There was not one instant to be spared, and we had no choice
but to try and escape as fast as we could, for the enemy was gaining
on us, and it would be madness to await his attack. I was steering,
and I exerted myself to the utmost to get away from the danger and
to escape to the shore. But the amphibiou