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We had caught half a dozen young ducks in the course of the day—an easy matter; for the old birds made such a fuss in attempting to decoy us away from them, pretending to be badly hurt, as they say the plover does, that we could always find them by going about in the opposite direction to the old bird, till we heard the young ones crying: then we ran them down, for they could not fly, though they were nearly full grown. Chowbok plucked them a little, and singed them a good deal. Then we cut them up and boiled them in another pannikin, and this completed our preparations.

When we had done supper it was quite dark. The silence and freshness of the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood-hen, the ruddy glow of the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles, packs, and blankets, made a picture worthy of a Salvator Rosa, or Nicolas Poussin. I call it to mind and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,—for if we did, we should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought, that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He who wrote, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona nôrint agricolæ,” might have written quite as truly; “O infortunatos nimiuim sua si mala nôrint;” and there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are. This, however, is a digression.

We found as soft a piece of ground as we could—though it was all stony—and having collected grass and