ou alone.

There is something like the gleam of water on that rock. A snake! Now a
sounding rush through the wood, and a passing shadow. An eagle! He
brushes so close to the child, that he strikes at the bird with a stick,
and then watches him as he shoots up like a rocket and, measuring the
fields of air in ever-widening circles, hangs like a motionless speck
upon the sky; though, measure his wings across, and you will find he is
nearer fifteen feet than fourteen.

Here is a prize, though! A wee little native bear, barely a foot
long,--a little gray beast, comical beyond expression, with broad
flapped ears,--sits on a tree within reach. He makes no resistance, but
cuddles into the child's bosom, and eats a leaf as they go along; while
his mother sits aloft and grunts indignant at the abstraction of her
offspring, but on the whole takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on
with her dinner of peppermint leaves.

What a short day it has been! Here is the sun getting low, and the
magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting.

He would turn and go back to the river. Alas! which way?

He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the way
he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which by
some infernal magic seemed to have got between him and the river. Then
he broke down, and that strange madness came on him, which comes even on
strong men, when lost in the forest--a despair, a confusion of intellect,
which has cost many a man his life. Think what it must be with a child!

He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and that
he must climb it. Alas! every step he took aloft carried him further
from the river, and the hope of safety; and when he came to the top,
just at dark, he saw nothing but cliff after cliff, range after range,
all around him. He had been wandering through steep gullies all day
unconsciously, and had penetrated far into the mountains. Night was
coming down, still and crystal clear, and the poor little lad was far
away from help or hope, going his last long journey alone.

Partly perhaps walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he got
through the night; and when the solemn morning came up, again he was
still tottering along the leading range, bewildered, crying from time to
time, "Mother, mother!" still nursing his little bear, his only
companion, to his bosom, and holding still in his hand a few poor
flowers he had gathered up