This castle-building temperament--which is, after all, nothing but hope engaged practically--may, when pushed too far, make a man dreamy, speculative, and visionary, but if restrained within any reasonable limits, cannot fail to support the courage in many an hour of trial, and nerve the heart against many a sore infliction. I know how it kept me up when others of very different thews and sinews were falling around me. Independently of this advantage, another and a greater one accompanied it. These self-created visions, however they may represent a man in a situation of greatness or power, always do so to exhibit him dispensing--what he imagines at least to be--the virtues of such a station! No one, I trust, ever fancied himself a monarch for the sake of all the cruelties he might inflict, and all the tyrannies he might practise; so that, in reality, this "sparring against Fortune with the gloves on" is admirable practice, if it be nothing else. It was on the seventeenth day of our wanderings that the guide announced that we had struck into the Chihuahua "trail"; and although to our eyes nothing unusual or strange presented itself, Hermose exhibited signs of unmistakable pride and self-esteem. As I looked around me on the unvarying aspect of earth and sky, I could not help remembering my disappointment on a former occasion, when I heard of the "Banks of Newfoundland," and fancied that the Chihuahua trail might have some such unseen existence as the redoubtable "Banks" aforesaid, which, however familiar to codfish, are seldom visited by Christians. "The evening star will rise straight above our heads to-night," said Hermose,--and he was correct; our path lay exactly in the very line with that bright orb. The confidence inspired by this prediction increased as we found that an occasional prickly pear-tree now presented itself, with, here and there, a dwarf-box or an acacia. As night closed in, we found ourselves on the skirt of what seemed a dense wood, bordered by the course of a dried-up torrent. A great wide "streak" of rocks and stones attested the force and extent of that river when filled by the mountain streams, but which now trickled along among the pebbles with scarcely strength enough to force its way. Hermose proceeded for some distance down into the bed of the torrent, and returned with a handful of sand and clay, which he presented to Halkett, saying, "The rains have not been heavy enough; this is last year's earth." Few as were the words, they conveyed to me an immense impression of his skill, who, in a few grains of sand taken at random, could distinguish the deposits of one year from those of another. "How does it look, Halkett?" cried one. "Is it heavy?" asked another. "It is worthless," said Halkett, throwing the earth from him. "But we are on the right track, lads, for all that; there 's always gold where the green snake frequents."