After our guide had taken his nap he led up the horses, and bidding adieu to our hosts, we continued our journey. We passed during the afternoon several habitations similar to the one where we dined. The same wretchedness; the same poverty exhibited itself, surrounded by troops of cattle, who bathed in plains of the most luxuriant pasturage. As the sun declined our guide began to sing a litany to the Virgin, in which he was joined by the boy who followed us. The strain was sweet. "And round a holy calm diffusing In melancholy murmurs died away." At the close of day we stopped at a hut, where the guide told us we must pass the night, and I learned that we had come ten leagues, though we had advanced at a snail's pace. The hut we entered was inhabited by an old man who, retiring with the guide to an adjoining shed, left us the house to ourselves. The couch, which invited us to repose, was a hide laid on the ground. Madame V---- had brought sheets, and, spreading them on the hide, I soon sunk to rest. But my slumbers were interrupted by a most unaccountable noise, which seemed to issue from all parts of the room, not unlike the clashing of swords; and, as I listened to discover what it was, a shriek from Madame V---- increased my terror. In sounds scarcely articulate, she said a large cold animal had crept into her bosom, and in getting it out, it had seized her hand. Frightened to death I opened the door and called the guide, who discovered by his laughing that he had foreseen our misfortune, and guarded against it by suspending his hammock from the branches of a tree. When I asked for a light to search for what had disturbed us, he said it was nothing but land crabs, which, at this season, descend in countless multitudes from the mountain, in order to lay their eggs on the sea shore.