TERCEIRA. 
15 
state of person : a dinnerless and houseless night 
was all we could expect, at best — a bivouac without 
either honour or glory — with the probability of rising- 
next morning still more stiff and hungry, to say 
nothing of the chance of not rising at all; for we 
were not unmindful of what had been said in Praya 
about the guerrillas and bandits, who being hunted out 
from the neighbourhood of our looked for lake, we 
thought could hardly have selected a more impracti- 
cable stronghold than the wood from which we had 
just emerged. 
Already the lengthened and purple shadows be 
tokened the close of day. A short halt just to recover 
breath was all that we could permit; for we were 
determined to press on, till night should fairly bar our 
farther progress. Across a forked indenture of the 
mountains, a level stream of light, stretching like an 
artificial horizon in the darkening sky, attracted our 
notice; and fancying that it might prove to be the sea, 
distant and hopeless as appeared our chance of success, 
to this we resolved to turn our steps, rather than wander 
on without any sort of guidance. Again we pushed 
forward with the last efforts of our strength; again 
we breasted the knotty steeps. Our high roads were 
the loose and rugged beds of the mountain torrent ; our 
cross roads were the arduous and thorny passages 
which we made for ourselves through the tangled 
brushwood; and our bye-roads lay through the cir- 
cuitous and zig-zag inequalities of ravines and 
c 2 
