ttle-snakes crawled across their track.

It was near sun-down when they emerged from among the hillocks, and
commenced stepping out on the hard, barren plain. Their conversation
now assumed a gloomier turn, for their thoughts were gloomy. They had
drunk all their water. The heat and dust had made them extremely
thirsty; and the water, warmed as it was in their gourd canteens,
scarcely gave them any relief. They began to experience the cravings of
thirst. The butte still appeared at a great distance--at least ten
miles off. What, if on reaching it, they should find no water? This
thought, combined with the torture they were already enduring, was
enough to fill them with apprehension and fear.

Basil now felt how inconsiderately they had acted, in not listening to
the more prudent suggestions of Lucien; but it was too late for
regrets--as is often the case with those who act rashly.

They saw that they must reach the butte as speedily as possible, for the
night was coming on. If it should prove a dark night, they would be
unable to guide themselves by the eminence, and losing their course
might wander all night. Oppressed with this fear, they pushed forward
as fast as possible; but their animals, wearied with the long journey
and suffering from thirst, could only travel at a lagging pace.

They had ridden about three miles from the dog-town, when, to their
consternation, a new object presented itself. The prairie yawned before
them, exhibiting one of those vast fissures often met with on the high
table-lands of America. It was a _barranca_, of nearly a thousand feet
in depth, sheer down into the earth, although its two edges at the top
were scarcely that distance apart from each other! It lay directly
across the track of the travellers; and they could trace its course for
miles to the right and left, here running for long reaches in a straight
line, and there curving or zig-zagging through the prairie. When they
arrived upon its brink, they saw at a glance that they could not cross
it. It was precipitous on both sides, with dark jutting rocks, which in
some places overhung its bed. There was no water in it to gladden their
eyes; but, even had there been such, they could not have reached it.
Its bottom was dry, and covered with loose boulders of rock that had
fallen from above.

This was an interruption which our travellers little expected; and they
turned to each other with looks of dismay. For some mi