The end of the track left us about eighteen miles from La Gloria. We set out to walk home, but late in the afternoon the party accidentally divided and both divisions got lost. Murphy and I spent an uncomfortable night in the thick, damp woods, and taking up the tramp early the next morning, found ourselves, two or three hours later, at the exact point near the end of Sanchez' plantation where we had begun our walk the afternoon before. We had walked about fifteen miles and got back to our starting point without realizing that we had deviated from the main trail. Stranger yet, the other division of the party had done exactly the same thing, but had reached this spot late the night before and was now half way to La Gloria. Murphy and I made a new start, and after getting off the track once or twice, finally reached the Maximo river, crossed it on a tree, and got into La Gloria at 5:30 that afternoon, nearly worn out and looking like wild men. I had had nothing to eat for forty-eight hours save two cookies, one cracker, and half a sweet potato. CHAPTER XVI. IN AND AROUND LA GLORIA. A very good Book that I wot of contains an Apocrypha. This will have no Apocrypha, but I will here relate an incident which did not come under my personal observation, but which was told of by my ordinarily veracious friend, Colonel Maginniss. At one time during the winter, Colonel Maginniss and his assistants had for three days, been searching for a company horse that was lost, when a man named Ramsden came to the colonel's tent and reported that there was a horse hanging in the woods not far away. The colonel and Mr. Jones went to the spot and found a large white horse, that had weighed twelve hundred pounds, dead in the thicket, hanging by the neck. No formal inquest was held, but it was the colonel's theory that this American-born horse could not live on Cuban grass, and had deliberately hanged himself. A somewhat similar case I was personally cognizant of. A sick horse was reported drowning in a shallow pond near the camp. Colonel Maginniss went to the scene on a Cuban pony, with a dozen colonists, and after a hard struggle the horse was dragged one hundred yards away from the mud and water, and left on dry land. Early the next morning it was discovered that the horse had worked his way back into the pond and drowned himself. Was this a case of animal suicide? It may be said that none of the colonists ever resorted to this desperate expedient, even when the sugar gave out. Colonel Maginniss was "a master hand in sickness." An English woman who came to the colony was very ill, and blood poisoning set in. The colonel's experience as a family man was now of service. He had the woman removed to a large tent, attended her personally and looked after the children, calling four or five times daily, and administering such remedies as he had. The woman recovered, and gratefully expressed the belief that the colonel had saved her life.