surrounding. Is a reverse process going on here, we
wondered, from that we have seen in the prairies, and are these sheets
of water to change slowly into marsh, and so to firm land again? There
are a number of such lakes as these, and on the heights above one of
the largest, which they have called Bethel, a family of Canadian
emigrants have recently "taken up a homestead."

There was still another chain of prairie-lakes, the "Old Field Ponds,"
stretching north and south on our right, and as we wound around them,
plashing now and again through the slowly-encroaching water, we had
'Gator-bone Pond upon our right. The loneliness of the scene was
indescribable: for hours we had been winding in and out among the still
lagoons or climbing and descending the ever-steeper, darker hills.
Night was drawing on; stealthy mists came creeping grayly up from the
endless Old Field Ponds; fireflies and glow-worms and will-o'-the-wisps
danced and glowered amid the intense blackness; frogs croaked,
mosquitos shrilled, owls hooted; Barney's usual deliberate progress
became a snail's pace, which hinted plainly at blankets and the
oat-sack,--when, all at once, a bonfire flamed up from a distant
height, and the sagacious quadruped quickened his pace along the steep
hill-road.

A very pandemonium of sounds saluted our ears as we emerged from the
forest--lowings and roarings and shriekings of fighting cattle, wild
hoots from hoarse masculine throats, the shrill tones of a woman's
angry voice, the discordant notes of an accordion, the shuffle of heavy
dancing feet. We had but happened upon a band of cow-hunters returning
homeward with their spoils, and the fightings of their imprisoned
cattle were only less frightful than their own wild orgies. If we had
often before been reminded of Italian skies and of the freshness and
brightness of Swiss mountain-air, now thoughts of the Black Forest,
with all of weird or horrible that we had ever read of that storied
country, rushed to our minds--robber-haunted mills, murderous inns,
treacherous hosts, "terribly-strange beds." Not that we apprehended
real danger, but to our unfranchised and infant minds the chills and
fevers which mayhap lurked in the mist-clothed forest, or even a
wandering "cat," seemed less to be dreaded than the wild bacchanals who
surrounded us. We would fain have returned, but it was too late. Barney
was already in the power of unseen hands, which had seized upon him in
the darknes