ite capable of being furiously jealous.

I left them a month before the day fixed for their marriage. My companions
were Gahra, and a dozen Indians and mestizoes, to each of whom I was
enabled, by Don Esteban's kindness, to give a handsome gratuity
beforehand.

To Juanita I gave as a wedding-present my ruby-ring, to Carmen my horse
Pizarro.

Our parting was one of the most painful incidents of my long and checkered
life. I loved them both and I think they loved me. Juanita wept
abundantly; we all embraced and tried to console ourselves by promising
each other that we should meet again; but when or where or how, none of us
could tell, and in our hearts we knew that the chances against the
fruition of our hopes were too great to be reckoned.

Then, full of sad thoughts and gloomy forebodings, I set out on my long
journey to the unknown.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HAPPY VALLEY.

My gloomy forebodings were only too fully realized. Never was a more
miserably monotonous journey. After riding for weeks, through sodden,
sunless forests and trackless wastes we had to abandon our mules and take
to our feet, spend weeks on nameless rivers, poling and paddling our canoe
in the terrible heat, and tormented almost to madness by countless
insects. Then the rains came on, and we were weather-stayed for months in
a wretched Indian village. But for the help of friendly aborigines--and
fortunately the few we met, being spoken fair showed themselves
friendly--we must all have perished. They gave us food, lent us canoes,
served us as pilots and guides, and thought themselves well paid with a
piece of scarlet cloth or a handful of glass beads.

My men turned out quite as ill as I had been led to expect. Several
deserted at the outset, two or three died of fever, two were eaten by
alligators, and when we first caught sight of the Andes, Gahra was my sole
companion.

We were in a pitiful plight. I was weak from the effects of a fever, Gahra
lame from the effects of an accident. My money was nearly all gone, my
baggage had been lost by the upsetting of a canoe, and our worldly goods
consisted of two sorry mules, our arms, the ragged clothes on our backs,
and a few pieces of silver. How we were to cross the Andes, and what we
should do when we reached Peru was by no means clear. As yet, the fortune
which I had set out to seek seemed further off than ever. We had found
neither gold nor silver nor precious stones, and all the coin I had