ng up anxiously at the huge moth, which was still creeping and
crawling on, each moment darker and more threatening. It was like
some frightful monster, or the fabled Kraken, working itself along by
its claws, which were struck deep into the mountain-wall on either
side of its line of progress, and casting its hideous shadow over hill
and dale, forest and valley, clothing them in gloom and darkness. To
our right hand and behind us, the mountains were still of a glowing
golden red, lighted up by the sun, but to the left and in our front
all was black and dark. With the same glance we beheld the deepest
gloom and the brightest day, meeting each other but not mingling. It
was a strange and ominous sight.

Ominous enough; and the brute creation seem to feel it so as well as
ourselves. The chattering parrots, the hopping, gibbering, quarrelsome
apes, all the birds and beasts, scream and cry and flutter and spring
about, as though seeking a refuge from some impending danger. Even our
horses begin to tremble and groan--refuse to go on, start and snort.
The whole animal world is in commotion, as if seized with an
overwhelming panic. The forest is teeming with inhabitants. Whence
come they, all these living things? On every side is heard the howling
and snarling of beasts, the frightened cries and chirpings of birds.
The vultures and turkey-buzzards, that a few minutes before were
circling high in the air, are now screaming amidst the branches of the
mahogany-trees; every creature that has life is running, scampering,
flying--apes and tigers, birds and creeping things.

"_Vamos, por la Santissima!_ On! or we are all lost."

And we ride, we rush along--neither masses of rock, nor fallen trees,
nor thorns and brambles, check our wild career. Over every thing we
go, leaping, scrambling, plunging, riding like desperate men, flying
from a danger of which the nature is not clearly defined, but which we
feel to be great and imminent. It is a frightful terror-striking foe,
that huge night-moth, which comes ever nearer, growing each moment
bigger and blacker. Looking behind us, we catch one last glimpse of
the red and bloodshot sun, which the next instant disappears behind
the edge of the mighty cloud.

Still we push on. Hosts of tigers, and monkeys both large and small,
and squirrels and jackals, come close up to us as if seeking shelter,
and then finding none, retreat howling into the forest. There is not a
breath of air stirring,