rious manner on charity during many months, had satisfied his hunger at length, unlawfully, at the expense of others. I was deeply moved by his appearance, and still more by the faltering accents and tone of anguish in which the details of his defence were delivered.
"I am a native of Quito," he said (I give his story in a more connected form than his own in relating it), "and would to Heaven I were in my native country at this moment; for I love it dearly, tempestuous and dangerous as it is. Time there passed joyously with me; I was prosperous and independent: I had my one-story cottage (all the houses there are low, having the whole of their apartments on the ground) and it was well stored both with tenants and provisions. Health and friends, family and position, fields, orchards, and cattle, all were mine. But I must not allude to them, or my heart will burst!
"The land of my birth—as perhaps you know, Señores—is nearly ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is liable to the most awful earthquakes and tornadoes. The hamlet in which I resided had several times suffered from these causes: often had our dwell-
