pitahaya_ projecting above might be likened to poised spears.

It is a scene at once soft and sublime--an Eden of angels beset by a
serried phalanx of fiends; below, sweetly smiling; above, darkly
frowning and weirdly picturesque. A wilderness, with all its charms,
uninhabited; no house in sight; no domestic hearth or chimney towering
over it; no smoke, save that curling aloft from the fire lately kindled
in the soldiers' camp. Beasts and birds are its only habitual denizens;
its groves the chosen perching place of sweet songsters; its openings
the range of the prong-horn antelope and black-tailed deer; while
soaring above, or seated on prominent points of the precipice, may be
seen the _caracara_, the buzzard, and bald-headed eagle.

Uraga has pitched his tents in an open glade of about ten acres in
superficial extent, and nearly circular in shape, lying within the
embrace of an umbrageous wood, the trees being mostly cotton woods of
large dimensions. Through its midst the streamlet meanders above,
issuing out of the timber, and below again entering it.

On one side the bluffs are visible, rising darkly above the tree-tops,
and in the concavity underneath stand the tents, close to the timber
edge, though a hundred paces apart from each other. The troop horses,
secured by their trail-ropes, are browsing by the bank of the stream;
and above, perched upon the summit of the cliff, a flock of black
vultures sun themselves with out-spread wings, now and then uttering an
ominous croak as they crane their necks to scan what is passing
underneath.

Had Uraga been influenced by a sense of sylvan beauty, he could not have
chosen a spot more suitable for his camping-place.

Scenic effect has nought to do with his halting there. On the contrary,
he has turned up the Alamo, and is bivouacking on its bank, for a
purpose so atrocious that no one would give credit to it unacquainted
with the military life of Mexico in the days of the Dictator Don Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna. This purpose is declared in a dialogue between the
lancer colonel and his lieutenant, occurring inside the conical tent
shortly after its being set up.

But before shadowing the bright scene we have painted by thoughts of the
dark scheme so disclosed, let us seek society of a gentler kind. We
shall find it in the marquee set apart for Adela Miranda and her maid.

It scarce needs to say that a change is observable in the appearance of
the lady. Her dr