The sun was near his setting, and our lads were so nigh exhausted that they had seated themselves on a moss-covered log to rest, when they were startled by a heavy rending crash that echoed through the listening forest with a roar like distant thunder. The boys looked at each other, and then at what bits of sky they could see through the far-away tree-tops. It was of unclouded blue, and the sun was still shining. "Rick!" cried Bonny, starting to his feet. "I believe it was a falling tree." "Well?" "I mean one that was made to fall by axe and saw." "Oh, Bonny!" was all that Alaric could reply; but in another instant he was leading the way through tall ferns and along the stately forest aisles in the direction from which had come the mighty crash. [TO BE CONTINUED.] A NEW WATER ROUTE TO CENTRAL AFRICA. BY CYRUS C. ADAMS. Any man who reveals to the world a great river on which steamboats can ply for hundreds of miles is a benefactor, and his name will be recorded among important explorers. Dr. Ludwig Wolf, in 1886, found a new water route to central Africa, and in all the good work he did until his death he never won a greater prize. Dr. Wolf loved the big continent, and he said that in all his life in Africa he never experienced such almost insupportable heat as he endured in Philadelphia during the Centennial Exposition. But he was convinced that women from the temperate zones should not try to live in tropical Africa, and believed that white men who spend their lives there should humanely renounce the idea of taking wives from their own race, and should marry women who were born in tropical countries.