was quite worthy of
an Inca princess--supposing Lawrence to have been right in his
conjecture on that point!

"Well, well, please yourself, Manuela," returned Pedro, with a laugh, in
which exasperation slightly mingled, "but do me the justice to tell your
father when you meet that I fairly remonstrated with and warned you.
After all, nothing would please me better,--if it should ever come
about."

He turned on his heel and went off, with a mingling of expressions on
his handsome face, to look after the canoe and make preparations for an
early start in the morning.

Canoe travelling appears to be rather slow work while it is going on,
even when descending the current of a river. Each point of land seems
to be reached and passed so gradually; every vista of the river seems so
extensive, and the trees on shore drop so leisurely astern, that when
you think of the hundreds of miles which lie in advance, you are apt to
feel as if the journey or voyage would never come to an end. But when
you forget the present and reflect on the past, when you think how many
hundreds of miles now lie behind, although it seems but yesterday that
you set out on the journey, then you realise the fact that the "power of
littles," of steady, daily unremitting perseverance, has had too little
weight with you in your estimates, and that, just as fast as your
starting-point recedes from you, exactly so fast does your goal
approach, although those misleading factors, your feelings, may have
induced you to think otherwise.

Five days after the occurrence of the events on what we may style
Turtle-beach, Lawrence found himself wondering at what appeared to be
the far-off-ness of the spot, considering the slowness of the hourly
progress, yet at the same time wondering if they should _ever_ traverse
the nine hundred or a thousand miles that yet intervened between him and
Buenos Ayres.

To do Lawrence Armstrong justice, however, he was by no means impatient.
He was quite satisfied that things should go as slowly as they pleased,
for was he not travelling through the most interesting of countries, in
which the flora and the fauna and the geological features furnished
abundant--ay, superabundant--food for the satisfaction of his scientific
appetite, while his companions were of the pleasantest character?
Pedro, since the opening up of his heart to him, had laid aside much--
though not all--of his reserve, and shown himself to be a man of
extensive in