But now occurred a wayfaring incident which could not thus be charmed to rest. Our team, about half-way up the long hill of San Juan, balked, and the wagon began to roll back to its base. We jumped out and clogged the wheels, for we had no idea of returning again to the mines. Having breathed a moment, we made another attempt, but without success; we now put our shoulders to the wheels, while the lash fell fast on the flanks of our horses. But no pushing, coaxing, or whipping availed; our journey for the day was done, and abruptly too as that of a migratory goose struck by a rifle ball. The shadows of the mountain pines were lengthening fast, and we retired into a glen at a short distance, and camped. It was my duty to procure water for coffee; the spring where the horses drank was too full of impurities; I followed up the unseen vein marked by the green willows, till its flowing wave murmured on the ear from the depths of a shadowy chasm. But the method of reaching it puzzled me as much as the faithful proxy of the Patriarch would have been, but for the pitcher and line of the gentle Rachel. How free of affectation and false alarm that daughter of Israel, as her snow-white arms drew the limpid tide to quench the stranger’s thirst! How free of a distrustful spirit, or disdaining pride, when told that one whom her father loved, sued for her bridal hand! The wave which swelled in her milk-white bosom may have trembled a moment, like the leaf stirred in the rosy twilight, and the dream of her pillowed slumber may have flushed through the snow-curl of her cheek, but with the early lark, she was up and away—happy in her own youth and innocence, and in the thought that these were inwoven with the happiness of another. How hollow the pretexts of protracted delay, when touched by the light which glimmers down through ages from the example of this primitive maiden! But where am I?—in the infant world instead of these chasmed rocks, which frown through the wrinkles of its decrepitude and age. How thought annihilates time and space! The flower that first bloomed on the verge of the globe, as it emerged from chaos, and the cinder that will fade last in the embers of its final conflagration, lie side by side in the domain of thought; and the star that hailed its birth, and the planet that will guard its tomb, are twin-born in the eternity of time. But I am off again in a philosophic revery, and must come back to my coffee-pot and chasm! With the aid of a long riata, my bucket was lowered sufficiently to dip the unseen stream; but drawing it up I discovered in its wave, as the surface became tranquil, what might well startle any one whose nerves were not of steel. It was a human face of bronze hue, half covered with tangled locks, and a beard of hermit growth, and so like that bent above, there was a relief in the ripple that destroyed the resemblance. But my camping companions will never, at this rate, get their coffee.