and the hair among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a

cinnamon bear of most unusual size. He quickened the pace of his

steed, and still following the quarry, came at last to the division

of two watersheds. On the far side the country was exceeding

intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted here and

there with a few pines, which seemed to indicate the neighbourhood

of water. Here, then, he picketed his horse, and relying on his

trusty rifle, advanced alone into that wilderness.

Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the

sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction,

was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos

strangely intermixed. The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and

winding passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for

miles together unscalable by man. The water, when the stream was

swelled with rains, must have filled it from side to side; the

sun's rays only plumbed it in the hour of noon; the wind, in that

narrow and damp funnel, blew tempestuously. And yet, in the bottom

of this den, immediately below my father's eyes as he leaned over

the margin of the cliff, a party of some half a hundred men, women,

and children lay scattered uneasily among the rocks. They lay some

upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring; their upturned

faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and emaciation; and

from time to time, above the washing of the stream, a faint sound

of moaning mounted to my father's ears.

While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet,

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