The mules were now unsaddled, and the trunks taken over, one by one, on the alcalde’s head.  Next, the animals were forced into the water, and, after vehement flounderings, now swimming, now stumbling over rolling stones, they were finally, bruised and bleeding and the forlornest of animals, got across in safety.  Next came our turn, and I led the way, with a thong fastened around my body below the armpits, and attached, in like manner, to our stalwart alcalde.  Long before we reached the middle of the stream, notwithstanding I carried a large stone under each arm by way of ballast, I was swept from my feet out to the length of my tether, and thus towed over by our guide.  When all were snugly across, the laughter was loud and long over the ridiculous figure which everybody had cut in everybody’s eyes, except his own.  H. immortalized the transit in what the French call un croquis, but it would hardly bear reproduction in the pages of a narrative so staid as this.

Intent on determining, with the least possible delay, the important question, whether the mountains really opposed an insurmountable obstacle to our project, I left my companions and Dolores to resaddle and get under way at their leisure, and pushed ahead with the alcalde.  Striking off from the mule-path, we climbed up, among loose rocks and dwarf-trees and bushes, to the top of the mountain.  My excitement gave me unwonted vigor, and my sturdy guide, streaming with perspiration long before we reached the summit, prayed me, “in the name of all the saints,” to moderate my rate of speed, and give him a trago of Cognac.  My suspense was not of long duration; for, on reaching the crest of the eminence, I found that we were indeed on a narrow spur, easily tunnelled, or readily turned by galleries in the rock, and that, beyond, the country opened out again in a broad table-land sloping gently from the north, and traversed nearly in its centre by the gorge of the river.  The break in the Cordilleras was now distinct, and I could look quite through it, and see the blue peaks of the mountains on the Atlantic slope of the continent.  A single glance sufficed to disclose all this to my eager vision, and the next instant six rapid shots from my revolver conveyed the intelligence to my companions, who were toiling up the narrow mule-path, half a mile to my right.  The Teniente dismounted, evidently with the intention of joining us, but soon got back again into his saddle,—­having experienced, as H. explained, “a sudden recurrence of palpitation.”

Rejoining my companions, I dismissed our guide with a reward which surprised him, and we pursued our way to the Portillo.  This name is given to the point where the path, after winding up the side of the mountain half-way to its summit, suddenly turns round its brow, and commences its descent.  It is a narrow shelf, in some places scarcely more than a foot wide, rudely worked in the living rock, which