About midday the tigers' skins were taken up, and the raft was soon floating over the combined streams. We had at first thought of proceeding in this way as far as the Gulf of Mexico; but the season was now too far advanced to admit of such an excursion. We at length made up our minds that the next day we should abandon our raft, and return by the shortest route to our starting-point. [Illustration] At dawn of day our bivouac was enlivened by hundreds of birds. L'Encuerado cut the mooring line of the raft, and let it float down the stream, thanking it at the same time for the services it had rendered us, and wishing it prosperity in its lonely voyage to the ocean. [Illustration: "The deer sank down under the weight of a puma."] As I stood watching the frail bark gliding away, two herons perched upon it, and it soon glided out of sight laden with its winged passengers. We were all ready to start; the "Tapir River," as Lucien had named it, we bid adieu to with three hurrahs, and our little party set off, following Sumichrast, who carried Master Job perched on his shoulder. Our way lay in part through a prairie, where the heat was overpowering, and in part through palm-tree woods, infested with mosquitoes. At last, overcome by fatigue, we felt compelled to halt and bivouac for the night. As we were arranging our bivouac next night, l'Encuerado saw a crayfish, and set off with Lucien to try and catch some of them. I and Sumichrast started on the trail of some deer we had seen bounding past. We had scarcely gone more than five hundred yards before we climbed a hill beyond which a savannah was spread out before us as far as the eye could reach, the high grass of which looked almost like ripe wheat. Sumichrast, who had halted, summoned me by an imitation of the cry of an owl. I hastily and noiselessly joined him, when he pointed out to me, among the trees, a deer quietly browsing, which would no doubt pass within gunshot. I stood watching by my friend, following with anxiety all the movements of the graceful animal, for twice it threw up its head and showed some vague uneasiness. Sumichrast, fearing that it was about to make off, was getting ready to fire, when the deer gave a bound and sank down under the weight of a puma, which had sprung upon it. I fired at the carnivore, which the ferocious brute responded to by a loud roar, then, dragging its prey a distance of about fifty yards, it suddenly made off. The venison of the deer, and more than thirty small crayfish caught by Lucien and his friend, were a godsend to our larder, and amply made up for the short commons of previous occasions. We watched the sun go down from the top of the hill, and descried on the horizon the bluish line of the Cordillera, with the volcano of Orizava towering up towards the west. Henceforth this mountain was to be our guide while crossing the immense savannah, an undertaking which filled me with dread. "Shall we cross that great plain?" asked Lucien.