are less leafy, the undergrowth is less dense, and a
mephitic odor pervades the air. Presently the foliage disappears
altogether, and the trees and bushes are as bare as if they had been
stricken with the blast of an Arctic winter; but instead of being whitened
with snow or silvered with frost they are covered with an incrustation,
which in the brilliant moonlight makes them look like trees and bushes of
gold. Over their tops rise faint wreaths of yellowish clouds and the
mephitic odor becomes more pronounced.

"At last!" shouts Carmen, as we reach the end of the trail. "At last!
_Amigo mio_, we are saved!"

Before us stretches a wide treeless waste like a turf moor, with a
background of sombre forest. The moor, which is broken into humps and
hillocks, smokes and boils and babbles like the hell-broth of Macbeth's
witches, and across it winds, snake-wise, a steaming brook. Here and there
is a stagnant pool, and underneath can be heard a dull roar, as if an
imprisoned ocean were beating on a pebble-strewed shore. There is an
unmistakable smell of sulphur, and the ground on which we stand, as well
as the moor itself, is of a deep-yellow cast.

This, then, is the _azuferales_--a region of sulphur springs, a brimstone
inferno, a volcano in the making. No hounds will follow us over that
hideous heath and through that Stygian stream.

"Can we get across and live?" I ask. "Will it bear?"

"I think so. But out with your knife and cut some twigs; and where are
your flint and steel?"

"What are you going to do ?"

"Set the forest on fire--the wind is from us--and instead of following us
farther--and who knows that they won't try?--instead of following us
farther they will have to hark back and run for their lives."

Without another word we set to work gathering twigs, which we place among
the trees. Then I dig up with my knife and add to the heap several pieces
of the brimstone impregnated turf. This done, I strike a light with my
flint and steel.

"Good!" exclaims Carmen. "In five minutes it will be ablaze; in ten, a
brisk fire;" and with that we throw on more turf and several heavy
branches which, for the moment, almost smother it up.

"Never mind, it still burns, and--hark! What is that?"

"The baying of the hounds and the cries of the hunters. They are nearer
than I thought. To the _azuferales_ for our lives!"

The moor, albeit in some places yielding and in others treacherous, did
not, as I feared, prove impassa