mals, and it but remains to make their
own beds. This done, by simply spreading their _jergas_ and
_caronillas_ along the flinty stalagmites, each having his own _recado_
for a pillow. Their ponchos, long since pulled apart, and the dust
cuffed out of them, are to serve for what they really are--blankets; a
purpose to which at night they are put by all gauchos and most
Argentinos--as much as they are used during day time for cloak or
greatcoat.

Each wrapping himself up in his own, all conversation ceases, and sleep
is sought with closed eyes. This night it is found by them in a
succession somewhat changed. As on that preceding, Ludwig is first
asleep; but almost instantly after it is Gaspar, not Cypriano, who
surrenders to the drowsy god; filling the hollow cavity with his
snoring, loud as that often heard to proceed from the nostrils of a
tapir. He well knows they are safe within that rock-bound chamber;
besides that he is tired dead down with the day's exertion; hence his so
soon becoming oblivious.

Cypriano is the last to yield. But he, too, at length gives way, and
all is silent within the cavern, save the "crump-crump" of the horses
munching their coarse provender, with now and then a hoof striking the
hard rock. But louder than all is that raucous reverberation sent up by
the slumbering gaucho.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THE "SACRED TOWN."

While the pursuing party is peacefully reposing upon the stalagmites of
the cavern, that pursued reaches its destination--the "Sacred town" of
the Tovas.

The _tolderia_, so named, stands upon a level plain, near the shore of a
large and beautiful lake, whose numerous low-lying islets, covered with
a thick growth of the _moriche_, have the appearance of palm-groves
growing direct out of the water itself.

A belt of the same stately trees borders the lake all around, broken
here and there by projecting headlands; while away over the adjacent
_campo_, on the higher and drier ground, are seen palms of other and
different species, both fan-leaved and pinnate, growing in copses or
larger "montes," with evergreen shrubs and trees of deciduous foliage
interspersed.

At some three or four hundred yards from the lake's edge, a high hill
rises abruptly above the plain--the only elevation within many miles.
Thus isolated, it is visible from afar, and forms a conspicuous feature
of the landscape; all the more remarkable on account of its singular
shape, which is the frustru