"Padre--I knew we would find it--but not this way! _Hombre!_ It was back of Popales. I had been washing the sands there for two days after my return. There was a town at that place, years ago. The stone foundations of the houses can still be seen. The Tiguí was rich at that point then; but it is washed out now. _Bien_, one morning I started out at daybreak to prospect Popales creek, the little stream cutting back into the hills behind the old settlement. There was a heavy mist over the whole valley, and I could not see ten feet before my face. _Bien_, I had gone up-stream a long distance, perhaps several miles, without finding more than a few colors, when suddenly the mist began to clear, and there before me, only a few feet away, stood a young deer, just as dumfounded as I was." He paused a moment for breath, laughing meanwhile at the memory of his surprise. Then he resumed. "_Bueno_, fresh venison looked good to me, Padre, living on salt _bagre_ and beans. But I had no weapon, save my _machete_. So I let drive with that, and with all my strength. The big knife struck the deer on a leg. The animal turned and started swiftly up the mountain side, with myself in pursuit. _Caramba_, that was a climb! But with his belly chasing him, a hungry man will climb anything! Through palms and ferns and high weeds, falling over rocks and tripping on ground vines we went, clear to the top of the hill. Then the animal turned and plunged down a glen. On the descent it traveled faster, and in a few minutes had passed clean from my sight. _Caramba_, I was angry!" He stopped to laugh again at the incident. "The glen," he continued, "ran down for perhaps a hundred yards, and then widened into a clearing. I have been in the Popales country many times, Padre, but I had never been to the top of this mountain, nor had I ever seen this glen, which seemed to be an ancient trail. So I went on down toward the clearing. As I approached it I crossed what apparently was the bed of an ancient stream, dry now, but with many pools of water from the recent rains, which are very heavy in that region. _Bien_, I turned and followed this dry bed for a long distance, and at last came out into the open. I found myself in a circular space, surrounded by high hills, with no opening but the stream bed along which I had come. At the far end of the basin-shaped clearing the creek bed stopped abruptly; and I then knew that the water had formerly come over the cliff above in a high waterfall, but had flowed in a direction opposite to that of Popales creek, this mountain being the divide.