At last I climbed the last patch, bathed in perspiration and red-hot, and words fail to describe the joyous surprise which befel me, on seeing before me the wooded vale and river, which I had been seeking so long in vain. In the first joy of my heart I forgot that it was still very uncertain whether I should find my comrades there, and that my existence might depend on a charge more or less in my possession. I fired my rifle and listened attentively to its echo as it rolled away along the mountains. I halted for a long time awaiting an answer, but to no effect. I looked long up the river with my excellent telescope to try and discover smoke, but also without success. Far and wide the rocky landscape lay before me, with no other sign of life than that of the buzzards circling round the heights. I had been resting for about half an hour and cooling myself in the fresh breeze, when I seized my rifle and proceeded down to the valley, which I reached in a much shorter time. I went up it to the foot of the hills, where I had fewer obstacles to contend with than in the wood that covered the river banks, till the declining sun as well as hunger and fatigue warned me to select my camp. I had gone a considerable distance when the sun stood over the distant hills, for I had walked on without resting, and had no rocks to scale. I turned off to a spring in the wood, and threw off my skins on the first bushes I came to, as they fatigued me too much, though their weight was not great. My fire was soon lighted at the roots of a stump, a stock of wood collected, my meal made, and supper eaten, which consisted of the remainder of the bear meat. Before I entered the wood, I had looked up to the hills above me, and reflected whether at nightfall I should light a fire there, which would certainly be seen a long way down the river. I might possibly give my friends a hint of my whereabouts, but equally well betray my halting-place to hostile Indians, who, if any were in the neighbourhood, would see something unusual in it. But then again it was an easy matter to hide myself from them, and as I was without a horse, seek a refuge which could easily be defended. I resolved to carry out my design, took my weapons and went up the hills, whose summit I reached at nightfall. I then collected fallen branches and brushwood round an old stone piled them up to a great height, and the fire quickly darted up crackling and roaring. I carried up a great number of logs from the trees lying around and threw them on the fire, which reminded me of the bonfires we used to light at home when I was a boy. When I thought the pile of wood large enough to last at least an hour I left the hill and went to the nearest knoll, where I sat down near some rocks and lit a pipe, which enjoyment I only allowed myself morning and night in order to make my tobacco last as long as possible, as the leaves of the sumach, which are a good substitute for tobacco, were not to be had. I