y horse and move onward. I continued up the lateral ravine--
since there was no path leading out from it; and to return to the
Huerfano, would have been to ride back into the teeth of danger. I
still felt faint. Though less than twenty-four hours since I had eaten,
I hungered acutely. Was there nothing I could eat? I looked
inquiringly around. It was a scene of sterility and starvation. Not a
symptom of life--scarcely a sign of vegetation! Rocks, bare and
forbidding, formed two parallel facades grinning at each other across
the gorge--their rugged features but little relieved by the mottling of
dark junipers that clung from their clefts. There appeared neither root
nor fruit that might be eaten. Only a chameleon could maintain
existence in such a spot!

I had scarcely made this reflection, when, as if to contradict it, the
form of a noble animal became outlined before my eyes. Its colour,
size, and proportions, were those of a stag of the red deer species; but
its spiral horns proclaimed it of a different genus. These enabled me
to identify it as the rare mountain-ram--the magnificent _ammon_, of the
Northern Andes. It was standing upon a salient point of the cliff--its
form boldly projected against the purple sky, in an attitude fixed and
statuesque. One might have fancied it placed there for embellishment--a
characteristic feature of that wild landscape. The scene would have
been incomplete without it. From my point of observation it was five
hundred yards distant. It would have been equally safe at five: since I
had no means of destroying it. I might easily have crept within
shot-range--since a grove of cotton-woods, just commencing where I had
halted, extended up the bottom of the ravine. Under these I could have
stalked, to the base of the cliff on which the animal stood--a sort of
angular promontory projecting into the gorge. This advantage only
rendered the sight more tantalising: my gun was empty, and I had no
means of reloading it. Was it certain the piece was empty? Why should
the Indian have believed it to be loaded? Up to this moment, I had not
thought of examining it. I drew the ramrod, and inverted it into the
barrel. The head struck upon a soft substance. The screw stood four
fingers above the muzzle: the gun was charged! There was no cap upon
the nipple. There had been none! This accounted for the piece having
missed fire. In all likelihood, I owed my life to the circumstance