look like precious gems, but are of no
value.

The Indians of the Orellanna, also, tell of horrible noises heard
occasionally in the Paraguaxo, which they consider the throes and groans
of the mountains, endeavoring to cast forth the precious stones hidden
within its entrails. Others have endeavored to account for these
discharges of "mountain artillery" on humbler principles; attributing
them to the loud reports made by the disruption and fall of great
masses of rock, reverberated and prolonged by the echoes; others, to the
disengagement of hydrogen, produced by subterraneous beds of coal in
a state of ignition. In whatever way this singular phenomenon may be
accounted for, the existence of it appears to be well established. It
remains one of the lingering mysteries of nature which throw something
of a supernatural charm over her wild mountain solitudes; and we doubt
whether the imaginative reader will not rather join with the poor Indian
in attributing it to the thunderspirits, or the guardian genii of unseen
treasures, than to any commonplace physical cause.

Whatever might be the supernatural influences among these mountains,
the travellers found their physical difficulties hard to cope with. They
made repeated attempts to find a passage through or over the chain, but
were as often turned back by impassable barriers. Sometimes a defile
seemed to open a practicable path, but it would terminate in some wild
chaos of rocks and cliffs, which it was impossible to climb. The animals
of these solitary regions were different from those they had been
accustomed to. The black-tailed deer would bound up the ravines on their
approach, and the bighorn would gaze fearlessly down upon them from some
impending precipice, or skip playfully from rock to rock. These animals
are only to be met with in mountainous regions. The former is larger
than the common deer, but its flesh is not equally esteemed by hunters.
It has very large ears, and the tip of the tail is black, from which it
derives its name.

The bighorn is so named from its horns; which are of a great size, and
twisted like those of a ram. It is called by some the argali, by others
the ibex, though differing from both of these animals. The Mandans call
it the ahsahta, a name much better than the clumsy appellation which it
generally bears. It is of the size of a small elk, or large deer, and of
a dun color, excepting the belly and round the tail, where it is white.
In it