or bay. But when the days begin to grow shorter and cooler, and the nights longer, though not a drop of rain has fallen for months, and the sky is still unclouded and blue as sapphire, the waters begin to reappear and increase in volume, and long before the winter rains descend the streams are running half bank full again. The secret of this is, that the surface evaporation increases with the length of the days and the heat of the sun, and diminishes as they diminish, the sources of supply, far in the deep, shady recesses of the mountains, remaining undiminished through all the season.
Another hour's ride down the shady road, and we emerge into the open Valley of Santa Clara, and for the first time in a week the familiar whistle of the locomotive falls upon our ears. Cool, quiet woods, lonely sea-shore, mountain heights, mementos of Castilian civilization, and best of all, the welcome rest and solitude of nature, good-by! Henceforth you are to me but a pleasant dream of the past.
In the mountains of Santa Cruz I met an old friend whom I had not seen before for years. He was crossing the mountains like myself on horseback, and would gladly bear me company as far as the western border of the Valley of Santa Clara. What had he been doing since he had drifted out of my sight some years before? As we rode through the forest he told me little by little the story of his later life, the main event in which impressed me deeply. As he told me the story then and there, I will tell it now to you.
"The long, hot September day was drawing to a
