ed
its maximum. Upon the fourth and fifth, the body grows weaker, and the
brain becomes deranged; the nerve, however, is less acute, and though
the suffering is still intense, hunger is never harder to endure than
upon the second or third days.

Of course, these remarks apply only to those not habituated to long
fasts. I have known men who could endure hunger for six days, and feel
less pain than others under a fast of twenty-four hours. Indians or
prairie-hunters were those men, and fortunately for them that they are
endowed with such powers of endurance, often driven as they are into
circumstances of the most dire necessity. Truly, "the Lord tempers the
wind to the shorn lamb!"

As I have said, my first thought was of something to eat.

I rose to my feet, and with my eye swept the prairie in every direction:
no object living or dead, greeted my sight; beast or bird there was
none; my horse alone met my glance, quietly browsing on his trail-rope.

I could not help envying him, as I scanned his well-filled sides. I
thought of the bounty of the Creator in thus providing for his less
intelligent creatures--giving them the power to live where man would
starve. Who does not in this recognise the hand of a Providence?

I walked forward to the edge of the barranca, and looked over. It was a
grim abyss, over a hundred feet in depth, and about the same in width.
Its sides were less precipitous at this point. The escarpment rocks had
fallen in, and formed a sort of shelving bank, by which a man on foot
might have descended into its bed, and climbed out on the opposite side;
but it was not passable for a horse. Its cliffs were furrowed and
uneven; rocks jutted out and hung over; and in the seams grew cactus
plants, bramble, and small trees of dwarf cedar (_Juniperus prostrata_).

I looked into its channel. I had heard the torrent rolling down in the
night. I saw traces of the water among the rocks. A large body must
have passed, and yet not a cupful could now have been lifted from its
bed! What remained was fast filtering into the sand, or rising back to
the heavens upon the heated atmosphere.

I had brought with me my rifle, in hopes of espying some living
creature; but after walking for a considerable distance along the edge,
I abandoned the search. No trace of bird or quadruped could be found,
and I turned and went back to the place where I had slept.

To draw the picket-pin of my horse and saddle him, wa