hardly exchanged a dozen words a day; but I confess that I found a perturbing charm in those eyes. As it was all in silence, though, there was no harm.

Scrope, however, ventured to tell his love-or, at least, to hint at it eloquently enough. I was not so deeply smitten as to be jealous, and I drew a breath of relief when I guessed his secret. It made me think better of him again. The stand he had taken about poor Angelo's gem, in spite of my efforts to account for it philosophically, had given an uncomfortable twist to our friendship. I asked myself if he really had no heart; I even wondered whether there was not a screw lose in his intellect. But here was a hearty, healthy, natural passion, such as only an honest man could feel-such as no man could feel without being the better for it. I began to hope that the sunshine of his fine sentiment would melt away his aversion to giving Angelo his dues. He was charmed, soul and sense, and for a couple of months he really forgot himself, and ceased to send forth his unsweetened wit to do battle for his ugly face. His happiness rarely made him "gush," as they say; but I could see that he was vastly contented with his prospects. More than once, when we were together, he broke into a kind of nervous, fantastic laugh, over his own thoughts; and on his refusal to part with them for the penny which one offers under those circumstances, I said to myself that this was humorous surprise at his good luck. How had he come to please that exquisite creature? Of course, I learned even less from the young girl about her own view of the case; but Mrs. Waddington and I, not being in love with each other, had nothing to do but to gossip about our companions whenever (which was very often) they consigned us to a tête-à-tête.

tellectual' husband, and if Mr. Scrope is not handsome, nor frivolous, nor overpolite, there's a greater chance of his being wise." Why Adina should have listened to my friend, however, was her own business. Listen to him she did, and with a sweet attentiveness which may well have flattered and charmed him.

We rarely spoke of the imperial topaz; it seemed not a subject for light allusions. It might properly make a man feel solemn to possess it; the mere memory of its luster lay like a weight on my own conscience. I had felt, as we lost sight of our friend Angelo that, in one way or another, we should hear of him again; but the weeks passed by without his re-appearing, and my conjectures as to the sequel, on his side, of his remarkable bargain remained quite unanswered. Christmas arrived, and with it the usual ceremonies. Scrope and I took the requisite vigorous measures,—it was a matter, you know, of fists and elbows and knees, and obtained places for the two ladies at the Midnight Mass at the Sistine Chapel. Mrs. Waddington was my especial charge, and on coming out we found we had lost sight of our companions in the crowd. We waited awhile in the Colonnade, but they were not among the passers, and we supposed that they had gone home independently, and expected us to do likewise. But on reaching Mrs. Waddington's lcdging we found they had not come in. As their prolonged absence demanded an explanation, it occurred to me that they had wandered into Saint Peter's, with many others of the attendants at the Mass, and were watching the tapers twinkle in its dusky immensity. It was not perfectly regular that a young lady should be wandering about at three o'clock in the morning with a very "unattractive" young man; but "after all," said Mrs. Waddington, "she's almost his cousin." By the time they returned she was much more. I went home, went to bed, and slept as late as the Christmas bells would allow me. rising, I knocked at Scrope's door to wish him the compliments of the season, but on his coming to open it for me, perceived that such common-place greetings were quite below the mark. He was but half undressed, and had flung himself, on his return, on the outside of his bed. He had gone with Adina, as I supposed, into Saint Peter's, and they had found the twinkling tapers as picturesque as need be.

On

He

say.

lessly, and I saw that he had something to At last he brought it out. "I say, I'm accepted. I'm engaged. I'm what's called a happy man."

Of course I wished him joy on the news; and could assure him, with ardent conviction, that he had chosen well. Miss Waddington was the loveliest, the purest, the most interesting of young girls. I could see that he was grateful for my sympathy, but he disliked "expansion," and he contented himself, as he shook hands with me, with simply saying "Oh yes; she's the right thing." He took two or three more turns about the room, and then suddenly stopped before his toilet-table, and pulled out a tray in his dressing-case. There lay the great intaglio; larger even than I should have dared to boast. That would be a pretty thing to offer one's fiancée," he said, after gazing at it for some time. could she wear it-how could one have it set?"

66

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"How

There could be but one way," I said; as a massive medallion, depending from a necklace. It certainly would light up the world more, on the bosom of a beautiful woman, than thrust away here, among your brushes and razors. But, to my sense, only a beauty of a certain type could properly wear it a splendid, dusky beauty, with the brow of a Roman Empress, and the shoulders of an antique statue. A fair, slender girl, with blue eyes, and sweet smile, would seem, somehow, to be overweighted by it, and if I were to see it hung, for instance, round Miss Waddington's white neck, I should feel as if it were pulling her down to the ground, and giving her a mysterious pain."

He was a trifle annoyed, I think, by this rather fine-spun objection; but he smiled as he closed the tray. "Adina may not have the shoulders of the Venus of Milo," he said, "but I hope it will take more than a bauble like this to make her stoop."

I don't always go to church on Christmas Day; but I have a life-long habit of taking a solitary walk, in all weathers, and harboring Christian thoughts if they come. This was a Southern Christmas, without snow on the ground, or sleigh-bells in the air, or the smoke of crowded firesides rising into a cold, blue sky. The day was mild, and almost warm, the sky gray and sunless. If I was disposed toward Christmas thoughts, I confess, I sought them among Pagan memories. I strolled about

the forums, and then walked along to the Coliseum. It was empty, save for a single figure, sitting on the steps at the foot of the cross in the center-a young man, apparently, leaning forward, motionless, with his elbows on his knees, and his head buried in his hands. As he neither stirred nor observed me when I passed near him, I said to myself that, brooding there so intensely in the shadow of the sign of redemption, he might pass for an image of youthful remorse. Then, as he never moved, I wondered whether it was not a deeper passion even than repentance. Suddenly he looked up, and I recognized our friend Angelo-not immediately, but in response to a gradual movement of recognition in his own face. But seven weeks had passed since our meeting, and yet he looked three years older. It seemed to me that he had lost flesh, and gained expression. His simple-souled smile was gone; there was no trace of it in the shy mistrust of his greeting. He looked graver, manlier, and very much less rustic. He was equipped in new garments of a pretentious pattern, though they were carelessly worn, and bespattered with mud. I remember he had a flaming orange necktie, which harmonized admirably with his picturesque coloring. Evidently he was greatly altered; as much altered as if he had made a voyage round the world. I offered him my hand, and asked if he remembered me.

"Per Dio!" he cried. "With good reason." Even his voice seemed changed; it was fuller and harsher. He bore us a grudge. I wondered how his eyes had been opened. He fixed them on me with a dumb reproachfulness, which was half appealing and half ominous. He had been brooding and brooding on his meager bargain till the sense of wrong had become a kind of smothered fear. I observed all this with poignant compassion, for it seemed to me that he had parted with something more precious even than his imperial intaglio. He had lost his boyish ignorance

that pastoral piece of mind which had suffered him to doze there so gracefully with his head among the flowers. But even in his resentment he was simple still. Where is the other one-your friend?" he asked.

me.

moment; when I looked at the young man again, his face had kindled. "Tiberius, eh? A Roman emperor sculptured on a big topaz-that's fortune enough for me! Your friend's a rascal-do you know that? I don't say it for you; I like your face, and I believe that, if you can, you'll help But your friend is an ugly little monster. I don't know why the devil I trusted him; I saw he wished me no good. Yet, if ever there was a harmless fellow, I was. Ecco! it's my fate. That's very weli to say; I say it and say it, but it helps me no more than an empty glass helps your thirst. I'm not harmless now. If I meet your friend, and he refuses me justice, I won't answer for these two hands. You see-they're strong; I could easily strangle him! Oh, at first, I shall speak him fair, but if he turns me off, and answers me with English oaths, I shall think only of my revenge!" And with a passionate gesture he pulled off his hat, and flung it

on the ground, and stood wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

I answered him briefly but kindly enough.. I told him to leave his case in my hands, go back to Lariceia and try and find some occupation which would divert him from his grievance. I confess that even as I gave this respectable advice, I but half believed in it. It was none of poor Angelo's mission to arrive at virtue through tribulation. His indolent nature, active only in immediate feeling, would have found my prescription of wholesome labor more intolerable even than his wrong. He stared gloomily and made no answer, but he saw that I had his interests at heart, and he promised me, at least, to leave Rome, and believe that I would fairly plead his cause. If I had good news for him I was to address him at Lariceia. It was thus I learned his full name, a name, certainly, that ought to have been to its wearer a sort of talisman against trouble,-Angelo Beati.

THE desert of Atacama, South America, slopes down with an undulating surface, from the high Cordillera, to the coast of the Pacific; and a more dreary, lonely and inhospitable region could scarcely be found on earth.

The bleak whirlwinds howl through its desolate valleys, and lift the dust, wherever the configuration of the ground allows its formation,-into high moving pillars, uniting at the top, and forming a gigantic framework, which in some instances resembles the specter of an immense gothic dome, supported by many pillars, through the interstices of which, the towering masses of the "Cordillera de los Andes," loom in their snowy grandeur and magnificence. The glaring sun, seldom hidden by clouds, darts his fiery rays upon its wide expanse, producing a suffocating heat, and surprising the traveler, almost daily, with the fantastical delusions of the mirage.

were stretching its immense limbs to repose, after the turbulent games of its boisterous play-fellow-the wind.

The sun sinks gradually behind the coast-range, displaying in rapid succession all his glorious tints on the mountains; and after fading away, the colors fly hesitatingly up to the western, sky, where their brilliancy lingers for a time.

After this display of natural fireworks, the pyramid of the Zodiacal light shoots. up in the west, and reaches almost the zenith, with a brightness which I have seen nowhere else. The heavens are covered with myriads of stars, sparkling in unsuppassed glory; and if it should happen so, the full moon, rising above the distant mountains, sheds, not as in other latitudes, a dreamy, but a strong and powerful light upon the quiet solitude, which shows clearly the bold and rugged outlines of the high Cordillera, and the undulating forms of the nearer hills, rising one above the other, like so many petrified waves.

For untold ages the above described phenomena followed each other in regular

succession, unobserved by the eye of the traveler; but the most powerful motive which prompts the human race to brave all dangers, and to suffer all kinds of privation, the auri sacra fames of the poet,opened also a road into the heart of this wilderness. The enterprising merchant followed up the track, and smoothed the way for scientific exploration.

The desert of Atacama rose gradually from the depth of the sea, to its present height, and the powers which formed it are probably still in activity.

Though the West Coast of South America is an almost uninterrupted desert, from Coquimbo to Payta, the desert of Atacama proper, is that portion of it, which in a length of about two degrees of latitude, and with a breadth of from fifty to two hundred English miles, follows the outline of the Pacific, and is divided into two unequal parts, by the tropic of Capricorn.

Some years ago great deposits of saltpeter were discovered, about ten miles from the coast, and the returning party of explorers painted a colossal anchor, with white paint, on the rocky side of the coastrange, as a landmark, being afraid other.wise not to be able to find the exact spot again.

An English company took the working of these rich strata of niter into their hands, and formed an admirably arranged establishment, the profits of which have been very considerable, and are still so. In consequence of this settlement, some fishermen built their huts near the coast, with the view of supplying the company's functionaries, amounting to several hundred persons, with the product of their labor. This cluster of huts was called La Chimba, by the Bolivian authorities, a name still used in their official documents, though everybody else calls the town, which has sprung up since then, Autopagasta.

The west-coast of South America has always been famed for its mineral wealth. In earlier times the mountains of Peru and Bolivia yielded enormous quantities of precious metals, and they are to this day productive. At a more recent period followed the silver-mines of Chaŭarcillo, near Copiapó, the richest in South America. The produce of these latter is the source, of the wealth of the richest families in Chili.

richer silver mines hidden somewhere in the desert of Atacama, but many expeditions in search of them returned without success, in some cases scarcely saving the lives of their members, after great sufferings, and almost superhuman exertions.

The solving of the mystery was reserved for Don Diaz Gana, a gentleman who had spent unsuccessfully many years in minehunting.

I shall freely translate the discovery of the great mining district of Caracoles, from a newspaper-The Caracolino-which is published in Autofagasta.

Don Diaz Gana succeeded in interesting the Baron de la Rivière in an exploring expedition into the desert of Atacama. The former engaged the "Cateadores," mine-hunters; the latter advanced the necessary means.

According to a contract between Diaz Gana and the Baron on the one side, and the exploring party on the other, the latter were to receive fifty per cent. of the result of the discoveries, and the two former twenty-five per cent. each.

The company, knowing that water existed about fifty leagues from the coast, near a mountain called "Limon Verde,"-green lemon,-agreed to take this direction.

After arriving near the said mountain, one of the party, Senor Mendez, descried a chain of undulating mountains in the distance, and his practical knowledge* in mining matters led him to believe that he beheld the place where the fortune was hidden for which they were searching. The caravan moved consequently in that direction.

From the middle of a plain rises a chain of rounded mountains, striking from north to south. It is cut in the middle by a deep ravine, which gives it the appearance of two islands, each a league long.

After preparing their provisional camp at the foot of these mountains, the party agreed to the direction which each of them should follow. Keyes, another of the explorers, impatient to begin work, had absented himself in the meantime, and, leisurely walking about, found some lumps of a blackish stone on a wonderfully broad vein of the same composition.

He mistook it for coal, and even after breaking the crust, blackened by the action.