What! not a native, not a farm-servant, at such a short distance! Harris must be wild! No! she repulsed this idea.

A new delay would have been the death of her little Jack! Meanwhile, Harris always kept in advance, but he seemed to observe the depths of the wood, and looked to the right and left, like a man who was not sure of himself--nor of his road.
Mrs.Weldon shut her eyes so as not to see him.
After a plain a mile in extent, the forest, without being as dense as in the west, had reappeared, and the little troop was again lost under the great trees.
At six o'clock in the evening they had reached a thicket, which appeared to have recently given passage to a band of powerful animals.
Dick Sand looked around him very attentively.

At a distance winch far surpassed the human height, the branches were torn off or broken.

At the same time the herbs, roughly scattered, exhibited on the soil, a little marshy, prints of steps which could not be those of jaguars, or cougars.
Were these, then, the "ais," or some other tardi-graves, whose feet had thus marked the soil?
But how, then, explain the break in the branches at such a height?
Elephants might have, without doubt, left such imprints, stamped these large traces, made a similar hole in the impenetrable underwood.

But elephants are not found in America.