had caused the earth on the slope of the mountain to shift its birth: an acre or more in some places appearing to have slid down lower, without much damaging the trees that are growing. I think we very soon lost our road, for the rest of the night was passed in looking after it, and groping among ravines and along narrow ridges hardly wide enough for one horse. We stopped at a ruined house at or near Richmond Hill, for in the dark I understood but too little of the country; our halt was chiefly to accommodate the cheeses, which were always breaking loose and rolling down the precipices to entertain Sneezer and Lynch, who had to scramble after them., The house we stopped at had no roof, or it was long since fallen in, and the trumpet trees grew out of it thirty or forty feet high; but the walls of stone were perfect, and might be inhabited again, with a new roof. Abbeysneezer professed now to know the way, and led us along another most dangerous ridge, which terminated in a flight of steps or foot-holes, scooped out of a bank that seemed to descend for a mile, as well as I could guess by the faint murmurs of a torrent, which I could see

below, bounding from rock to rock, and flashing in the starlight as it hurried from the lowest into a lower deep, still threatening to devour us and our cheeses,-for here they took a most romantic flight, as I have done from sympathy.-Sneezer insisted the cattle. could and should go down the ladder, which I thought about as practicable as making a dog leap over a ditch with a pole. I was afraid to venture the horses; and the Abbé preferred (I think it was spite) to dispatch his cantancrous mule first, but the mule was sullen; however, Sneezer overmatched him here, for he tripped up his hind legs with the assistance of Lynch, and launched him upon the loose and yielding runaway land, which went away with him I could not guess where, for the mule was out of sight in half a minute, and we could only hear a crashing, rumbling, and grunting, mingled with the roar of the torrent, until every other sound seemed buried in the last. The cheeses had been tied afresh with a cord and suspended over the mule's crupper, and when the animal tripped up, the cord burst and the cheeses flew or rolled off, like a couple of cars parting from the pinnacle

of Beaujon, by apparently opposite routes to arrive at the same goal. Lynch ran after one, and his master slid half way down the mountain in pursuit of the other, dragging after him his horse, whose saddle was torn off by one of the stirrups hanging in the stump of a dead tree. Sneezer was trying his skill with the sumpter mule, which somehow tumbled off his portmanteaus, and ran away back by the path we had come; and Dollar, groping about, thought he had found a safer path to the right hand, whither he drove the horses, until he got a mile off, on the other side of the torrent. I remained alone amidst this scene of confusion for a few minutes, and then assisted my long-legged companion in safety to the bottom of the ravine, where I found Lynch reuniting the cheeses and calling to his mule, who, having no mind to stay behind, was descending the hill like a philosopher, at a very steady pace.

A good hour elapsed before we were again in marching order, when with little exertion we gained the shore of Yallah's river, and found ourselves opposite the enchanted mansion which I had penetrated a few nights ago;

we left it however on our left, crossed the cows' ford as before, and arrived in another half hour at the house we sought, where I am to wait for my radical friend."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

February 23.

I WAITED Some days in St. David's before my radical friend Mr. Mathews made his appearance with a young gentleman, who solicited to share our toils in the expedition we had planned to the Blue Mountain peak. This youth, whom I shall call Mr. Selwyn, was mounted on a grey mare, and came attended by a party of negroes, carrying provisions of all kinds; fresh and salted beef, pork, poultry, yams, and plantains, with a sufficiency of wine to make a noble libation to. Bacchus, and enough rum to console one or two of the priests of that deity who presides over the manufacture of it. I have heard that the black gentleman, Old Nick, is ycleped the inventor of this fiery potation. He furnished us likewise with blankets and Kilmarnock caps, and dispatched three negroes across the