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Show CHAPTER V. FRIEND OF THE MOUNTAINEER. When I passed out of the Arroyo of the Churches, it was well on in the afternoon and the sun beat intensely hot upon the steep trail, while the whole atmosphere was motionless and penetrated with heat. No man, exper ienced in mountain trails, would trust his life down these precipitous windings to the best horse that ever car ried saddle. The long suffering " burro" or donkey, with the pace of a snail and the look of a half fool, may be a butt for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in animal histories ; he may be ridiculed and despised in cities and on the farm, but in the mountains, amid dan gerous curves and fearful, dipping trails the donkey ife king of all domestic animals. The burro is not, as Sunday school books picture him, the clown and puppet of domestic beasts. He is the most imperturbable philosopher of the animal kingdom, the wisest thing in his own sphere in existence, and the best and truest friend of the mountaineer. He is a stoic among fatalists, a reliable staff in emergencies and an anchor of hope in dangerous places. Like the champion of the prize ring, Joe Gans, or the sporting editor's " king of the diamond turf," Cy Young, the donkey " neither drinks, nor smokes, nor chews tobacco;" in a word, he's a " brick." The greatest avalanche that ever thundered down the sides of the Matterhorn, the loudest detonation of vol canic Vesuvius, the roll and heave and twist of Peruvian earthquake; any one of these or all of them " in damna- |