es
among the pebbles perhaps. Maybe he's finding fresh-water shells. Any
oysters there, Mr Briscoe?"

"Haven't found any yet," shouted Briscoe, laughing.

But Brace noticed that he stooped down once or twice and scooped up a
handful of sand, to wash it about in the water and examine it very
carefully before tossing it away, and then, shouldering his gun, he
returned to Brace's side.

"What a lovely place this is!" he said. "Hadn't we better get back and
report progress to your brother?"

"Yes, I think so," said Brace; "but what did you find?"

"Pst! Keep quiet. I don't want the men to know."

"What was it--footprints in the sand belonging to the men of your golden
city?"

Briscoe looked at him sharply.

"No," he said, in a low tone so that no one else could hear, "but signs
of gold itself, and we may be on the way to the legendary city after
all."

"What?" cried Brace, smiling. "You don't mean to say that you are still
thinking about that! I thought you had entirely forgotten it."

"To be frank, I always do think about it, for I believe in it most
firmly: otherwise I should not be here."

"Nonsense! It's nothing but a myth--a legend," said Brace.

"I think not," said Briscoe gravely. "I believe it's as much a fact as
the golden cities of the Mexicans and Peruvians that the Spaniards
proved to be no myths."

"No: that was true enough," replied Brace thoughtfully.

"So's this. I've dreamed about it for years, and I mean to find it
yet."

"Why, you surprise me. I thought it was the temple of natural history
which you used as your place of worship."

"So I do, but I've got the golden city behind all that."

"Nonsense! It is, as you said just now, merely a dream."

"Perhaps."

"Where is it to be found? You did not fancy it was up the Orinoco, did
you, when you planned to go up there?"

"Yes, either there or up here," said Briscoe. "Don't you understand
that it must be on the banks of some river out of the bed of which the
Indians could wash gold?"

"No. I should have thought it would be close to some mountain out of
which the old people could dig gold."

"Then I shouldn't," said Briscoe. "The first gold-finders found it in
the beds of the streams down which it had been washed. That's what I
think, and I determined to come up and examine the South American rivers
till I found the right one. I meant to go up the Orinoco; but the
Amazons did just as well. It might be there, but i