The stalks of the nettles, cut off a few inches above the ground, served to give firmness to our footing. But l'Encuerado, always too confident, tripped up, and his right cheek was brushed by some of their leaves; it only needed this to render him perfectly unrecognizable. Although I pitied him, I could not help smiling at the grimaces produced on his sun-burnt visage by the painful stings. Even Sumichrast, when looking at him, forgot his own sufferings. Under a cypress, we observed five or six snakes, each about a yard and a half long. One, more courageous than the others, remained under the trees and steadily surveyed our party. Gringalet, furious in the extreme, barked and jumped all round the reptile, which, raising its head from the centre of the coil formed by its body, shot out its tongue. Its skin was of a golden yellow, dotted with green spots, and streaked by two almost imperceptible black lines. L'Encuerado called in the dog; the snake then coiled itself up, slowly turning its head in every direction, as if to select the best direction for retreat. Suddenly it unrolled its whole length, exposing to our view an unfortunate sparrow, which was still breathing. Leaving it unmolested, after a few minutes' delay it seized its victim by the head, by degrees the little feathered innocent disappeared, and the snake remained motionless as though exhausted by the exertion. "Is it a rattle-snake?" asked Lucien astonished. "No; it is a common snake--that is, a reptile which is not venomous. This one is called by the Indians the _Yellow-snake_, and, from ignorance, they are in very great dread of them. It is in the habit of climbing trees with great activity, and hunts birds. The statues of the Aztec god of war, the terrible Huitzilipochtli, to whom thousands of men were offered as living sacrifices, had their foreheads bound with a golden snake, and we have every reason to believe that the reptile which we have just seen is that which the Indians thus honored." A little farther on, Lucien fancied that he saw, stretched out upon the grass, a long white snake. Gringalet, much bolder than usual, seized the reptile in his mouth and brought it to us. But it was nothing but a serpent's skin: I then told the child that all reptiles of this kind change their skin twice a year, and they get out of it as if from a sheath.