THE FRENCHMAN'S FALL.
137
neaiiag the place, to hear the sound of laughter and loud talking
!
This
levit}'
remonstrate with
my
seemed so
ill-timed, that I intended to
who had been
friends
left to
watch.
M}' anger, however, was soon turned mto joy, for I found the laughers bending over the
precipice,
and addressing
jokes to the bushy head of a stumpy tree which grew from the side of the mountam, some fifteen feet below the path,
and in which the Frenchman had providentially alighted, while his horse had been dashed to pieces.
We
soon pulled our friend up.
Of
fall
this
we
found he was imhm-t,
except by a few scratches, though fear had paralj^sed him, that for a
com'se
at
good quarter of an hour
he had been unable to utter one word.
first
so
after his
Even now,
at
length of time, he has not completely recovered his
nerve,
and
will
not cross the mountaiu, even by the coach
road, on horseback."
This story took so long to
tell,
that
we had reached the
grass-gi'own walls of the Fort of St. Carlos, just above the
Quebrada, which rmis into
The sun was now
La
Guaira, before
terrifically hot,
it
was done.
and we pushed on with
all
speed to C.'s house, wliich we reached at half-past 9 a.m.,
having been about three horn's in coming the whole waj'.
My
La Guau-a was to inspect the custommight now be said to be joint proprietor
only business at
house, of which I
with the government, as
my
lection of the export duties.
agents had assumed the col-
On
going over the building, I
found the lower story divided into six long stores
—which
together might contain about two thousand five hundred
tons of merchandise ing as
much
in all could
— and one square
as the other six.
store, capable of hold-
Perhaps
five
thousand tons
be warehoused at one time in the building, but