led on, ineffectually endeavouring to
appease the thirst which consumed me, by thinking that in a short time I
should be able to gratify it to my heart's content.

At last we gained the top of the second elevation, the loftiest of
those I have described as extending in parallel lines between us and the
valley we desired to reach. It commanded a view of the whole intervening
distance; and, discouraged as I was by other circumstances, this
prospect plunged me into the very depths of despair. Nothing but dark
and fearful chasms, separated by sharp-crested and perpendicular ridges
as far as the eye could reach. Could we have stepped from summit
to summit of these steep but narrow elevations we could easily have
accomplished the distance; but we must penetrate to the bottom of every
yawning gulf, and scale in succession every one of the eminences before
us. Even Toby, although not suffering as I did, was not proof against
the disheartening influences of the sight.

But we did not long stand to contemplate it, impatient as I was to reach
the waters of the torrent which flowed beneath us. With an insensibility
to danger which I cannot call to mind without shuddering, we threw
ourselves down the depths of the ravine, startling its savage solitudes
with the echoes produced by the falling fragments of rock we every
moment dislodged from their places, careless of the insecurity of our
footing, and reckless whether the slight roots and twigs we clutched at
sustained us for the while, or treacherously yielded to our grasp. For
my own part, I scarcely knew whether I was helplessly falling from the
heights above, or whether the fearful rapidity with which I descended
was an act of my own volition.

In a few minutes we reached the foot of the gorge, and kneeling upon
a small ledge of dripping rocks, I bent over to the stream. What a
delicious sensation was I now to experience! I paused for a second to
concentrate all my capabilities of enjoyment, and then immerged my lips
in the clear element before me. Had the apples of Sodom turned to ashes
in my mouth, I could not have felt a more startling revulsion. A single
drop of the cold fluid seemed to freeze every drop of blood in my body;
the fever that had been burning in my veins gave place on the instant to
death-like chills, which shook me one after another like so many shocks
of electricity, while the perspiration produced by my late violent
exertions congealed in icy beads upon my f