I remember dismounting on a high bank. I must have travelled unconsciously for hours before, for the sun was low down on the horizon as I alighted. It was a very high bank--a precipice--and below me I saw a beautiful river sweeping onward through groves of emerald greenness. I thought there were many birds fluttering in the groves, and their voices rang in delicious melody. There was fragrance on the air, and the scene below me seemed an Elysium. I thought that around where I stood all was bleak, and barren, and parched with intolerable heat. I was tortured with a slakeless thirst that grew fiercer as I gazed on the flowing water. These were real incidents. All this was true. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I must drink. I must to the river. It is cool, sweet water. Oh! I must drink. What! A horrid cliff! No; I will not go down there. I can descend more easily here. Who are these forms? Who are you, sir? Ah! it is you, my brave Moro; and you, Alp. Come! come! Follow me! Down; down to the river! Ah! again that accursed cliff! Look at the beautiful water! It smiles. It ripples on, on, on! Let us drink. No, not yet; we cannot yet. We must go farther. Ugh! Such a height to leap from! But we must drink, one and all. Come, Gode! Come, Moro, old friend! Alp, come on! We shall reach it; we shall drink. Who is Tantalus? Ha! ha! Not I; not I! Stand back, fiends! Do not push me over! Back! Back, I say! Oh! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Part of all this was a reality; part was a dream, a dream that bore some resemblance to the horrors of a first intoxication. CHAPTER TWELVE. ZOE. I lay tracing the figures upon the curtains. They were scenes of the olden time--mailed knights, helmed and mounted, dashing at each other with couched lances, or tumbling from their horses, pierced by the spear. Other scenes there were: noble dames, sitting on Flemish palfreys, and watching the flight of the merlin hawk. There were pages in waiting, and dogs of curious and extinct breeds held in the leash. Perhaps these never existed except in the dreams of some old-fashioned artist; but my eye followed their strange shapes with a sort of half-idiotic wonder. Metallic rods upheld the curtains; rods that shone brightly, and curved upwards, forming a canopy. My eyes ran along these rods, scanning their configuration, and admiring, as a child admires, the regularity of their curves. I was not in my own land. These things were strange to me. "Yet," thought I, "I have seen something like them before, but where? Oh! this I know, with its broad stripes and silken texture; it is a Navajo blanket! Where was I last? In New Mexico? Yes. Now I remember: the Jornada! but how came I? "Can I untwist this? It is close woven; it is wool, fine wool. No, I cannot separate a thread from--