hery frondage above. These formed a canopy,
underneath which, from tree to tree, three hammocks were extended. One
was empty; the other two were occupied. The elliptical outlines,
traceable through the gauzy network of Indian grass, proved that the
occupants were females.

Their faces were turned from me. They lay motionless: they were asleep.

As I stood gazing upon this picture, the occupant of the nearest hammock
awoke, and turning, with a low murmur upon her lips, again fell asleep.
Her face was now towards me. My heart leaped, and my whole frame
quivered with emotion. I recognised the features of Guadalupe Rosales.

One limb, cased in silk, had fallen over the selvage of her pendent
couch, and hung negligently down. The small satin slipper had dropped
off, and was lying on the ground. Her head rested upon a silken pillow,
and a band of her long black hair, that had escaped from the comb,
straggling over the cords of the hammock, trailed along the grass. Her
bosom rose with a gentle heaving above the network as she breathed and
slept.

My heart was full of mixed emotions--surprise, pleasure, love, pain.
Yes, pain; for she could thus sleep--sleep sweetly, tranquilly--while I,
within a few paces of her couch, was bound and brutally treated!

"Yes, she can sleep!" I muttered to myself, as my chagrin predominated
in the tumult of emotions. "Ha! heavens!"

My attention was attracted from the sleeper to a fearful object. I had
noticed a spiral-like appearance upon the lliana. It had caught my eye
once or twice while looking at the sleeper; but I had not dwelt upon it,
taking it for one vine twined round another--a peculiarity often met
with in the forests of Mexico.

A bright sparkle now attracted my eye; and, on looking at the object
attentively, I discovered, to my horror, that the spiral protuberance
upon the vine was nothing else than the folds of a snake! Squeezing
himself silently down the parasite--for he had come from above--the
reptile slowly uncoiled two or three of the lowermost rings, and
stretched his glistening neck horizontally over the hammock. Now, for
the first time, I perceived the horned protuberance on his head, and
recognised the dreaded reptile--the _macaurel_ (the _cobra_ of America).

In this position he remained for some moments, perfectly motionless, his
neck proudly curved like that of a swan, while his head was not twelve
inches from the face of the sleeper. I fancied t