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knees, through a clay always soft, and from late rains, very deep, the condition of the garments bearing evidence to the truth of his statement, I assented, and remembering that I had been a soldier, at least in heart, and was determined to be a backwoodsman, I put on a disguise in which no one but my dog would have recognized me. He then produced a bundle of pine knots, the mouth of the cave was close at hand, and lighting one of them we set out.

The opening of the cave was indeed a small one, in the side of a bank, and he said the descent was gradual but continued for a great distance, and that the ramification of the galleries was almost endless, some leading to large chambers, others terminating in terrific pits. Having lit a second torch and secured the rest, we entered; we were soon in darkness, with the exception of the murky light thrown by our torches, which seemed in constant danger of being extinguished, from the current of air that rushed through the narrow passage, and the great dampness. The clay was so soft that our hands went in above the wrists, and I found my limbs a weary weight indeed. We had proceeded in this manner fifteen or twenty minutes, when a peculiar sound struck my ear; I spoke to the guide, but he insisted it was only the splash of water that had oozed through and was falling near us, and enjoining care of my torch, with an assurance we should soon be able to stand upright, crawled on; I was fain to follow, but in a few seconds sounds, to me unequivocally those of an animal in distress or anger, again reached us-we both halted.

"It would be ridic'lous if it should be a bar, (bear) them creturs sometimes come in here, and I have nothing but my knife."

A true son of old Kentuck indeed, thought I-to whose mind no image of mirth was brought up by the expectation of an attack from an infuriated animal in such a spot-for western phraseology was then new to me. A short consultation ensued, and we determined to continue onwards, in the hope we should be able to reach one of the chambers of the cavern in time to defend ourselves.

We had hardly recommenced our cautious progress, feeling more painfully than before the narrowness of the passage, the heaviness of the clay, and the oppression created by the smoke of our anxiously watched torches, when a violent rush, an ejaculation from my guide and the extinction of his torch, was followed by my own overthrow, and the alarmed animal, whose

retreat we had thus unwittingly entered, rushed over me with a force and weight that seemed to be that of a mammoth, burying my face completely in the clay.

It was some seconds before we could raise ourselves; we were in utter darkness, in the bowels of the earth; unexplored passages terminating in fathomless gulphs, or leading to chambers, which we had proved were not without their occupants, were around us. To be once more on the surface of the earth and in the light, was my principal desire, (though I doubt whether my Kentuckian would have consented to the abandonment of our project, could our pine knots have been rekindled,) and I lost no time in attempting to retrace, not our steps but our way. The fear of the unknown and ferocious beast had given way to the more terrific one, of a lingering death in the darkness and silence of the cave, or the fearful agony of being precipitated over one of the subterranean precipices.

It seemed as if instinct guided us, for ere long we beheld a faint glimmering before us, which proved to be the mouth of the cave. I shall never forget the sensation with which I once more raised myself up and assumed proud man's distinguishing attitude.

But our perils were not yet over. Hardly had we inhaled our free breath, when a rustle in the neighboring thicket brought back for an instant the suffocating palpitation I had felt in the cave; do me the justice to believe it was but for an instant, and rather from recollection than present fear; I seized a stout stick and my guide drew his knife, and acting by impulse in concert, we moved towards the thicket together. The rustling was renewed, and we paused for a moment to see in what part of the brake to make our onset, when, tearing the branches that opposed its progress, the cause of our alarm sprang before us a large hog.

Mortification and vexation predominated over every other feeling, and it was some time before we ventured to steal a glance at each other, when our ridiculous appearance, cased with clay as if in armour, together with the whole scene, threw us into a fit of laughter. And thus ludicrously terminated a train of incidents, which, while they seemed to promise for your friend some most romantic conclusion, provokingly left him at last but the inkling of an adventure.

A.

LODGINGS AT ZARAGOZA.

From a Manuscript Work.

[BY A TRAVELLER IN SPAIN. ]

THE inn at which I found myself established at Zaragoza, though called the best in the place, was a very sorry affair. It was a large ruinous old house, which doubtless in its better days had been the mansion of some family of wealth and dignity, but had now come to the base uses of a common inn, an emblem perhaps of the fortunes of its once lordly tenants, who may have fallen too from former magnificence into poverty and neglect. Its present occupants were sluttish people, who left the great porch and stairway unswept by day and in gloomy darkness by night, while the chambers and the table accorded but too well with the other arrangements of the careless wife of the host, a woman of slovenly attire, unwinning person, and a shrill voice, that was often heard ringing ill-naturedly from the kitchen to the garret.

The rooms of this cheerless domicil had such a desolate air, that for the sake of companionship in misery, I took a large wo-begone apartment with one of my fellow passengers of the diligence; whom, though I have nothing to say in his praise, I will nevertheless introduce to the acquaintance of the reader. Don Ambrosio Salsereta was a withered, sallow, wrinkled little man, who counted some fifty-five winters, but had the face and figure of a man much more advanced in life. Had I been a better physiognomist, I might have discovered a victim of one of the most fatal passions, in the bloodless parchment complexion, in the reddened eye, the anxious countenance, the trembling hand, the thin gray hair, the broken form, and the general aspect of premature decay and exhaustion. But these are sometimes the symptoms of the innocent prey of disease or misfortune; and perhaps it was not surprising that one still young in the world, should not have been able to make the distinction. Don Ambrosio, as I afterwards learned from his own story, and principally from other sources, was born to a good estate and grew up a boy of lively mercurial temperament, more fond of pastimes than study, and of a disposition that rejected control. When he came to the proper age, he was sent to the university of Salamanca, where the idle schoolboy was readily recognized in the careless student. He soon found that philosophy had no charms, that law was a pest, and

metaphysics an utter abomination, to a man of spirit and fortune. Besides to have pestered his brains with these quirks and subtleties, would have been an idle waste of trouble to one who had highborn friends at Salamanca. By their influence he was carried triumphantly through the horrors of examinations; and came forth full fledged at the end of his career, a very Aristotle in philosophy, a Cicero in latinity, and a Justinian in jurisprudence, without having once troubled his head about the matter.

Emerging from the cobweb halls of Salamanca with all these ready-made accomplishments, he soon found himself in the possession of his long expected estate, and the gay world all before him where to choose.' For a man of wealth and spirit to languish in the dullness of a provincial town, or in the sombre old fashioned halls of his ancestral mansion, would have been no better than being buried alive. Madrid was the only place for one who aspired to shine as the fine gentleman of wit and fortune, and to Madrid hurried the hopeful Don Ambrosio Salsereta. With the dashing spirit that characterized him, he took a short cut to the object of his ambition, and made his debut in the fashionable world with becoming magnificence. Whose was the gayest livery, and the most spirited pair and the costliest coach on the Prado? Why whose could it be but the newly arrived Don Ambrosio, the happy heir of a lordly store of ducats, who had come to Madrid to breathe the atmosphere of the court, and spend his fortune as became an elegant gentleman. As a matter of course he became a connoisseur in fine women as well as fine equipages, and also accomplished himself in the art of losing gracefully at the card table, an art in which he made a handsome progress, while a student at Salamanca. Things went on thus swimmingly for some time, till one day his contador, or steward, hinted that his treasury was on the wane, and suggested with becoming delicacy the propriety of selling some of his estates. A contador, by the way, is in Spain an indispensable appendage to a man of fortune or fashion, who occupied with the more agreeable amusement of spending money, would consider it a degradation to perplex himself with the dull and vexatious care of gathering it in. The Spanish contador, is a person usually in not much better odour for probity and principle, the the Alguazil or the Escribano, and while he ministers to the extravagance of his employer, usually takes care to realize the familiar adage, ' quien el aceite mesura las manos se unta.' He who measures

oil, anoints his fingers with it. Whether the contador of Don Ambrosio was an exception to the character of his tribe or not, the heedless profligacy of his master was quite sufficient to account for the rapid disappearance of his patrimonial ducats, which, to make a long story short, were soon utterly spent on horses, women, and at play-that railroad to ruin.

It was probably a great surprise to the dashing Don Ambrosio, to find his fingers so soon at the bottom of his purse, and groping about in its empty meshes without finding so much as a maravedi. Doubtless he had some twinges of conscience, and may have even railed at himself a little for having played the man of spirit and fashion with such unexampled cleverness and success. But these seeds of repentance being sown on stony ground, were soon devoured by the hungry passion that had now taken unlimited possession of his heart. Having begun to play as the fine gentleman, he continued it as the gambler by profession. As he had gone to school to that shrewd mistress experience, and felt his wits additionally sharpened by the fruitful mother of invention,' he probably found this for a time a tolerable resource with the unwary. Indeed I once fell in with one of his countrymen, who, having got into his clutches, had taken a lesson in circumspection to the tune of a pocket full of ducats. But as talent is sure to be sooner

or later appreciated by the discerning public, the Madrilenians became at last so well convinced of Don Ambrosio's genius and dexterity, that they modestly shrank from competition with him; so that this ambitious Alexander of the card table and dice box, grew tired of the scenes of his victories, and sighed for new worlds to conquer. With the perseverance of the worthy Cristoval Colon, he made voyages of discovery to the provincial towns and cities, staying long enough in each to enable the innocent natives to form a proper estimate of his abilities, and then extending his researches elsewhere. With this praiseworthy motive he had probably come to Zaragoza, and had timed his arrival at that opportune season, when the approaching celebration of the Virgin of the Pillar attracted crowds of curious strangers and country gentry to the battered capital of Aragon.

Had I been able to read the story of Don Ambrosio's life by intuition, I should of course have preferred the solitude of the gloomiest room of that desolate mansion, to the worshipful society of a veteran gambler. But as these facts only came to my knowledge from a foreign source, the anxious reader must

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