MARTIN AND BARNEY CONTINUE THEIR TRAVELS, AND SEE STRANGE THINGS--AMONG OTHERS, THEY SEE LIVING JEWELS--THEY GO TO SEE A FESTA--THEY FIGHT AND RUN AWAY Martin Rattler and Barney O'Flannagan soon after this began to entertain a desire to travel further into the interior of Brazil, and behold with their own eyes the wonders of which they had heard so much from their kind and hospitable friend the hermit.

Martin was especially anxious to see the great river Amazon, about which he entertained the most romantic ideas,--as well he might, for there is not such another river in the world for size, and for the many curious things connected with its waters and its banks.

Barney, too, was smitten with an intense desire to visit the diamond mines, which he fancied must be the most brilliant and beautiful sight in the whole world; and when Martin asked him what sort of place he expected to see, he used to say that he "pictur'd in his mind a great many deep and lofty caverns, windin' in an' out an' round about, with the sides and the floors and the ceilin's all of a blaze with glittering di'monds, an' top'zes, an' purls, an' what not; with Naiggurs be the dozen picking them up in handfuls.

An' sure," he would add, "if we was wance there, we could fill our pockets in no time, an' then, hooray for ould Ireland! an' live like Imperors for ivermore." "But you forget, Barney, the account the hermit has given us of the mines.

He evidently does not think that much is to be made of them." "Och! niver mind the hermit.