half-dazed with sleep, had never thought of looking at his rope.

Defrauded, so to speak, out of our Englishman, and finding that the horses, after the long journey and the change of water and of grass, daily grew thinner, making it quite impossible to move them, forwards or back, and after having vainly tried to sell them, change them for mules, or sugar, quite without success, no one except some “fazendero” here and there caring for horses in a land where every one rode mules, we settled down to loaf.  Once certain we had lost our money and our pains, nothing remained but to wait patiently until the horses got into sufficient state to sell, for all assured us that every day we went further into the interior, they would lose flesh, that we should have them bitten by snakes in the forests, and arrive at Rio, if we ever got there, either on foot, or with but the horses which we rode.