at last the matter ceased even to excite their wonder, as the strangest things do when once they have become familiar. Now, in South America at least, the fact is notorious, and notoriety, here as elsewhere, ought, I think, to be accepted as proof. Moreover, nobody has the slightest fear of the puma. There is no record of men having been seized by it, as they often are, or, at least, as they often used to be, by the jaguar, and even if a little girl or boy happens to be out on a dark night, nobody is alarmed, if only pumas are supposed to be about. When the Gaucho we have been reading about told his strange story, nobody disbelieved him, or even thought it was anything very remarkable. If, however, it had been told in early colonial days, before the Spaniards had left a race of half-breed descendants, whose life is always bringing them into contact with wild animals, and who are familiar with all their ways, in that case it would either have been discredited or else put down to a miracle. Whether the story of Maldonada, as told by the old Spanish chronicler, Rui Diaz de Guzman, is true or false, and whether, if true, it is in the nature of a miracle or not, I will let my readers decide: but here it is. In the early days of the Spanish conquest, Buenos Ayres, which is now a large and beautiful city, the capital of the Argentine Republic, was only a small town, with a fort and some soldiers to guard it, and in the year 1536 it was besieged by the Indians, so that, the provisions being exhausted, a terrible famine set in. Eighteen hundred people died of starvation, and the putrefying smell of their bodies, which were disposed of hastily in shallow trenches, only just outside the town, caused beasts to assemble from the surrounding country, so that the risk of being devoured by them was added to that of death at the hands of the Indians, for any who might venture beyond the palisades. Still, as the allowance of flour on which the survivors were living had shrunk to six ounces a day, whilst the flour itself had become almost putrid, there were many who were content to run both these risks for the chance of finding anything, either living or dead, which hunger might enable them to eat, in the woods surrounding the town. Amongst these was a young and beautiful woman named Maldonada, who, losing her way, and wandering amongst the woods, was at last taken by the Indians, and received by them into their tribe. A few months afterwards, however, the governor of the town, a man named Ruiz, succeeded in ransoming her, and she was brought back. [Illustration: A GALLANT WILD ANIMAL. For two whole nights an enormous puma defended the girl from the attacks of countless wild beasts.]