legatees; they were assisted by a few buzzards
and crows, who also appeared to take a lively
interest in my decline, However, as the day went
on, hope revived in my heart. Perhaps it never
had completely left me, even in the coldest
and gloomiest hour of the night. The Indian
savage never despairs under any circumstances,
and the civilised man who leads the same free
open air life soon arrives at the same happy
condition of mind. This day was spent in
the same manner as the day before. I was still
almost unable to move, and felt above everything
the tediousness of my condition. The
quail now appeared tiresome, the coyotés were
impertinent, the buzzards had been, from the first
disgusting,  and I could not refrain from the
hope, that  if I was to perish by that well side,
my obsequies would be enjoyed by so many
beasts as to leave nothing upon a bone of me
for those horrible birds.

But I did not think my case so desperate.
Towards evening hope grew stronger. Finding
that I could crawl a little, I collected all
the dry wood that lay near and made a small
fire. When I lay coiled by it, after the Indian
fashion, the want of blankets was not so much
felt. But the plan had its inconvenience; for,
during the night, I awoke with my clothes on
fire, and had some trouble in extinguishing
myself. By the fire-light, too, I then saw—or fancied
that I saw—the horrible forms of scorpions and
centipedes creeping about; so that on the whole
I did not get my bed warmed without paying
something for the luxury.

The third and fourth days of my crushed-
worm state of existence, passed more hopefully
yet. I found that I could walk a little with
the assistance of two sticks, and I became
confident that I should get out of the "fix" in
safety. Twenty-five miles of sand were a long
stretch for a cripple: still the feat might be
done on the tortoise system. The buzzards
recognized the fact of my convalescence, and
evidently viewed it with feelings of disgust. When
they saw me moving about, they heavily flapped
wings, and by their departure gave me
earnest of a good deliverance.

There is no more to be told, except that
slowly, patiently, and with much suffering, I
crept for my life across the five-and-twenty
miles of desert, to that place of human luxury
in which I found my truant horse. I began with
the remark that I had had an unpleasant experience
of nights spent in the boundless bed-
chamber. On second thoughts, I don't know
that they were not half enjoyed.

PERFUMES.

The chief places for the growth of the
sweet, perfume-producing flowers are Montpelier,
Grasse, Niemes, Savoy, Cannes, and Nice.
Nice alone produces a harvest of a hundred
thousand pounds of orange blossoms, and Cannes
as much again, and of a finer odour. Five
hundred pounds of orange blossoms yield about
two pounds of pure Neroly oil. At Cannes the
acacia (Acacia Farnesiana) thrives particularly
well and produces yearly about nine thousand
pounds of blossoms. One great perfumery
distillery at Cannes uses yearly about one hundred
and forty thousand pounds of orange blossoms,
twenty thousand pounds of acacia flowers, a
hundred and forty thousand pounds of rose-leaves,
thirty-two thousand pounds of jessamine
blossoms, twenty thousand pounds of violets,
and eight thousand pounds of tuberoses, together
with a great many other sweet herbs.
The extraction of ethereal oils, the small quantities
of which are mixed in the flowers with
such large quantities of other vegetable juices
that it requires about six hundred pounds of
rose-leaves to win one ounce of otto of roses, of
course demands a very careful treatment.

Nice and Cannes are the paradise of violets,
producing annually something like thirteen
thousand pounds of blossoms. The variety
cultivated is generally the double or Parma violet,
which is so productive that the flowers are sold
at about fivepence per pound; and we all know
what sort of bouquet a pound of violets would
make.

The abundance in Sicily of every flower
which in our climate is most highly prized,
recals the traveller in the story, who arrived
in a country where the children played
at pitch-and-toss and marbles with diamonds,
rubies, emeralds, and other precious gems.
"These are, doubtless, the sons of some powerful
king," he said, and bowed respectfully before
them. The children, laughing, made him soon
perceive that they were the street boys, and that
the gems were only the pebbles of that country.
In Sicily, the crimson grenade and rose-trees, the
peach-coloured rhododendrons, and the delicate
white camellias, form the country hedges. The
white and green myrtles, and pink, white,
and flame-shaped and flamed-coloured tulips,
grow wild. When a pleasure-garden is made,
the orange and lemon-trees are taken out,
because they are too common. By the same
rule, very few people trouble themselves with
flowers: they are too vulgar. Alphonse Karr
was much surprised to notice that the ladies
of Nice never decorated themselves with real
flowers, but seemed to dislike them. He observes
this is all the more strange in a country
where it is no longer a mythological flattery to
say that flowers spring from under the ladies'
feet. The roses, violets, jessamine, and
migonette, are cultivated only by the peasants for
perfumery purposes, and honoured but as we
honour potatoes or cabbages.

Alphonse Karr has thus described a sale of
some jessamines at Nice. "The other day I
saw two cultivators in a garden; one was
buying of the other four thousand Spanish
jessamine roots. I was not present at the struggle,
but it must have been hot and passionate.
When I arrived, the sale of the jessamines was
concluded. The ordinary price of the Spanish
jessamine is from three to five francs the
hundred roots. These jessamines were splendidly
loaded with large white flowers and pinkish