y ascent; but the
chips now disappeared, and, like Tom Thumb, I lost my way. I attempted
to retreat, but in vain; I was no longer amongst forest trees, but in a
maze of young mountain ash, from which I could not extricate myself: so
I stood still to think what I should do. I recollected that the usual
course of proceeding on such occasions, was either to sit down and cry,
or attempt to get out of your scrape. Tom Thumb did both; but I had no
time to indulge in the former luxury, so I pushed and pushed, till I
pushed myself out of my scrape, and found myself in a more respectable
part of the woods. I then stopped to take breath. I heard a rustling
behind me, and made sure it was a panther:--it was a beautiful little
palm squirrel, who came close to me, as if to say "Who are you?" I took
off my hat and told him my name, when, very contemptuously, as I
thought, he turned short round, cocked his tail over his back, and
skipped away. "Free, but not enlightened," thought I; "hasn't a soul
above nuts." I also beat a retreat, and on my arrival at the hotel,
found that, although I had no guides to pay, Nature had made a very
considerable levy upon my wardrobe: my boots were bursting, my trowsers
torn to fragments, and my hat was spoilt; and, moreover, I sat shivering
in the garments which remained. So I, in my turn, levied upon a cow
that was milking, and having improved her juice very much by the
addition of some rum, I sat down under the portico, and smoked the cigar
of meditation.

The walls of the portico were, as usual, scribbled over by those who
would obtain cheap celebrity. I always read these productions; they are
pages of human life. The majority of the scribblers leave a name and
nothing more: beyond that, some few of their productions are witty, some
sententious, mostly gross. My thoughts, as I read over the rubbish,
were happily expressed by the following distich which I came to:--

Les Fenetres et les Murailles,
Sont le papier des Canailles.

A little farther on, I found the lie given to this remark by some
philosophic Spaniard:

Amigo quien quiera que seas, piensa que si acqui
Pones tu nombre, pronto il tiempo lo borrara
Escribe lo pues en il libro de Dio en donde.
Permancera eternamente--
In Amigo.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TWELVE.

Returning to Utica, I fell in with a horse bridled and saddled, that was
taking his way home without his master, every now and then cropping the
gra