Seen and Lost. 
373 
slope, we began our laborious ascent. 'Now the 
gauclio wben taken from his horse, on which he 
lives like a kind of parasite, is a very slow- moving 
creature, and I soon left my friends far behind. 
Coming to a place where ferns and flowering herbage 
grew thick, I began to hear all about me sounds of 
a character utterly unlike any natural sound I was 
acquainted with — innumerable low clear voices 
tinkling or pealing like minute swmet-toned, resonant 
bells — for the sounds wore purely metallic and per- 
fectly bell-like. I wms completely ringed round 
v/ith the mysterious music, and as I walked it rose 
and sank rhythmically, keeping time to my steps. 
I stood still, and immediately the sounds ceasedc 
I took a step forwards, and again the fairy-bells 
were set ringing, as if at each step my foot touched 
a central meeting point of a thousand radiating 
threads, each thread attached to a peal of little bells 
hanging concealed among the herbage. I waited 
for my companions, and called their attention to 
the phenomenon, and to them also it was a thing 
strange and perplexing. It is the bell-snake I ’’ 
cried one excitedly. This is the rattle-snake ; but 
although at that time I had no experience of this 
reptile, I knew that he was wrong. Yet how 
natural the mistake ! The Spanish name of bell- 
snake had made him imagine that the whirring 
sound of the vibrating rattles, resembling muffled 
cicada music, is really bell-like in character. Even- 
tually we discovered that the sound was made by 
grasshoppers ; but they were seen only to be lost, 
for T could not capture one, so excessively shy and 
cunning had the perpetual ringing of their own 
