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162 to them nothing of her origin was known. And she, poor girl, had only a vague remembrance of a few words heard in childhood from her mother, and probably not rightly understood.

While these thoughts had been passing through my mind Rima had been standing silent by, waiting, perhaps, for an answer to her last words. Then stooping, she picked up a small pebble and tossed it three or four yards away.

"Do you see where it fell?" she cried, turning towards me. "That is on the border of Guayana—is it not? Let us go there first."

"Rima, how you distress me! We cannot go there. It is all a savage wilderness, almost unknown to men—a blank on the map"

"The map?—speak no word that I do not understand."

In a very few words I explained my meaning; even fewer would have sufficed, so quick was her apprehension.

"If it is a blank," she returned quickly, "then you know of nothing to stop us—no river we cannot swim, and no great mountains like those where Quito is."

"But I happen to know, Rima, for it has been related to me by old Indians, that of all places that is the most difficult of access. There is a river there, and although it is not on the map, it would prove more impassable to us than the mighty Orinoco and Amazon. It has vast malarious swamps on its borders, overgrown with dense forest, teeming with savage and venomous animals, so that even the Indians dare not venture near it. And