Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/318

286 road. We lost our way for six miles, and had to ride back and take another track. Our black guides had not laid a branch across the road for us. (It is an African custom to place a twig or branch on the road, to convey any intelligence to those who are coming after you.) We came to a Slough of Despond, a mud-hole across the road, which looked only a little wet and dirty, but a mule or rider may be engulfed in it. Mr. Fitzpatrick luckily preceded me, and fell into it. My mule jumped it, and in the jump my pistol fell out of my belt into it, and was never seen more. We had a very hard day of it up and down hill through virgin forest with several of these swamps. At sunset we arrived very tired at the top of a hill, and found an aboriginal-looking settlement of huts. We then descended into the valley by a steep, winding road for some distance, and came to a long, straggling, hilly, but pretty and more civilized village, with a few churches and a running brook, with a decent ranch at its extreme end, where there was a party of English engineers, who kindly attended to our creature comforts while at Lagôa Dourada.

It was Sunday, the Eve of St. John, and there were big bonfires and a village band. Our ranch was a cottage. The brook with the gold-washings ran by it, and the purling thereof made pleasant music that night.

The great object of our visit to Lagôa Dourada was to see with disinterested eyes which course the continuation of the Dom Pedro Segunda Railway should run through Minas—that is, to see which course