menon of the electric
wire otherwise than as a simple truth easily comprehended? And yet
there was a time--ah! there was a time--when to have proclaimed this
truth would have rendered you or me ridiculous. There was a time,
indeed, when it might have cost us our lives or our liberties. Remember
Galileo!

I was saying, then, that people who live at home do not know _what
thirst is_; for _home_ is a place where there is always water. They
cannot comprehend what it is to be in the desert without this necessary
element. Ha! _I_ know it; and I give you my word for it, it is a
fearful thing.

Our young hunters had but a faint idea of its terrors. Hitherto their
route had been through a well-watered region--scarcely ever running ten
or a dozen miles without crossing some stream with timber upon it, which
they could see a long way off, and thus guide themselves to the water;
but they little understood the nature of the country that was now before
them. They knew not that they were entering upon the desert plains--
those vast arid steppes that slope up to the foots of the Rocky
Mountains--the Cordilleras of the Northern Andes.

Francois, rash and impetuous, never dreamt of danger: Basil, courageous,
did not fear it: Lucien had some misgivings, because he had heard or
read more of it than the others. All, however, were curious to visit
the strange, mound-looking eminence _that_ rose out of the plain. This
was quite natural. Even the rude savage and the matter-of-fact trapper
often diverge from their course, impelled by a similar curiosity.

The horses were watered and saddled; Jeanette was packed; the
water-gourds were filled; and our adventurers, having mounted, rode
forward for the "butte."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE HUNT OF THE WILD HORSE.

"There must be buffalo in this neighbourhood," said Basil, looking to
the ground as they rode on. "These `chips' are very fresh. They cannot
have lain for many days. See! there is a buffalo-road covered with
tracks!"

As Basil said this, he pointed to a trough-like hollow in the prairie,
running as far as the eye could reach. It looked like the dry bed of a
stream; but the hoof-tracks in the bottom showed that it was what he had
called it,--a buffalo-road, leading, no doubt, to some river or
watering-place. It was so deep that, in riding along it, the heads of
our travellers were on a level with the prairie. It had been thus
hollowed out by the water during