After we spent the night in his home he asked me if I could write. Replying in the affirmative, I was installed as chief book-keeper of the notorious runaway sailor boarding house. My duties were to register the sailors brought to the house, keep a record of their meals, charge so much a night for lodging, and present their bill when they were ready to leave. I held the position for two weeks, when one night Cockney came home intoxicated and told me that he had shipped Mitchell that night on a French bark. A sailor gave me a sly wink and whispered, "Your turn will come next, he intends to ship you on a whaler." My experience with the ice on the Aven had given me a horror of frozen seas, and that night I stole away from the boarding house. I was in dread of Cockney Spider, and, in my determination to escape, I became a stowaway on a coast steamer and landed at Arica, with a few dollars in my pocket, paid to me by Spider. When I arrived at Mollendo in company with Mr. John L. Thorndike, he introduced me to Mr. Hill, his general manager, as his "boy protector" and told him to give me employment and see that I was well provided for. In a short while I was in the railway shops, learning the trade of machinist, and later I was engineer on the railroad running from the sea port of Mollendo to Arequipa, more than one hundred miles in the interior. The city is situated in a beautiful and fertile valley in the heart of the Andes. The majestic volcanic mountain Misti some miles away rises nearly four miles above the sea and smoke still issues from its crater. I had lately been transferred from the shops in Mollendo to Arequipa, when, hearing fabulous stories of rich gold finds in the Andes, and being imbued with an adventurous spirit, I resolved to try my fortune in the new El Dorado. V. FAIREST FLOWER OF THE CORDILLERAS. I was in the heart of the Cordilleras, weary, footsore and alone. I was descending a rocky cliff a few hundred feet from a plateau, while the thunders roared with terrific crash. The rain fell in sheets, plunging in wild fury in cataracts down the mountain side. There was desolation and terror unutterable. I leaned close to a shelving rock, and as I thought of once happy days in Aberdeen, of the love bestowed upon me by my dear mother--gone forever from this world--my own condition, now a homeless wanderer in a foreign land, perhaps to soon meet death and my body be devoured by condors, I laid my head on my arms and wept bitterly.