llustration: "Lucien loudly called out to me."]

Our encampment was established at the entrance of a fresh glade.
L'Encuerado had killed five or six small birds; we were, therefore,
certain of something for dinner. We had scarcely finished our building
operations, when Lucien, who had been prowling about, lifting up
stones and looking under stubs in order to find insects, loudly called
out to me. When I got up to him, I saw at the bottom of a hole a
coral-serpent, measuring about a yard in length. The reptile was coiled
up, and remained motionless while we admired its beautiful red skin,
divided at intervals with rings of shining black. L'Encuerado promptly
cut a forked stick and pinned the animal down to the ground. The
prisoner immediately tried to stand up on end; its jaws distended, and
its head assumed a menacing aspect. Gringalet barked at it furiously,
without, however, daring to go near. The Indian unsheathed his
cutlass--the prospect of an unlooked-for addition to dinner quite
delighted him.

The flesh of the serpent is a well-known Indian dish. Previous to the
conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the rattlesnake itself found its
place at their highest festivals. Dioscorides[M] prescribed the flesh of
the viper as a tonic, and it formed one of the component parts of
_theriaca_, the great panacea of our ancestors, which was one of the
principal branches of Venetian commerce. In spite of all these
precedents, the dish proposed by l'Encuerado was unanimously rejected.

Having cut off the serpent's head, we all went off to reconnoitre. Going
in pursuit of a troop of squirrels, we were led to the edge of the glade
without having been able to reach them. A little way in the forest,
Sumichrast espied a small russet-colored owl, which suddenly disappeared
in a hollow at the foot of an old tree. We all kept quiet for ten
minutes, in order to observe the bird's way of hunting. At last it
suddenly reappeared, and, standing motionless and upright upon its legs
at the entrance of its place of refuge, it looked very like a sentinel
on duty in his watch-box. Suddenly it started, and slightly bending its
body, winked its great yellow eyes several times; then, skimming over
the ground with the swiftness of an arrow, it darted into the high
grass. It soon made its appearance again, with its feathers erect and
flapping its wings. It held in its mouth a poor little mouse, which it
carried off into its subterraneous retreat. It w