WHAT WAS SAID AT TOULOUSE. 865

were not certain: so in about an hour we came to the town where
we were to lodge, which we found in a terrible fright, and all in
arms; for it seems that, the night before, the wolves and some
bears had broken into the village in the night, and put them ina
terrible fright, and they were obliged to keep guard night and
day, but especially in the night, to preserve their cattle, and
indeed their people

The next morning our guide was so ill, and his limbs swelled
with the rankling of his two wounds, that he could go no further ;
so we were obliged to take a new guide there, and go to Toulouse,
where we found a warm climate, a fruitful, pleasant country, and
no snow, no wolves, nor anything like them. But when we told our
story at Toulouse, they told us it was nothing but what was
ordinary in the great forest at the foot of the mountains, especially
when the snow lay on the ground. But they inquired much what
kind of a guide we had gotten that would venture to bring us
that way in such a severe season; and told us it was very much
we were not all devoured. When we told them how we placed
ourselves, and the horses in the middle, they blamed us exceed-
ingly, and told us it was fifty to one but we had been all destroyed :
for it was the sight of the horses which made the wolves so furious,
seeing their prey; and that at other times they are really afraid

of a gun; but the being excessive hungry, and raging on that
" account, the eagerness to come at the horses had made them sense-
less of danger; and that if we had not by the continued fire, and
at last by the stratagem of the train of powder, mastered them, it
had been great odds but that we had been torn to pieces; whereas
had we been content to have sat still on horseback, and fired as
horsemen, they would not have taken the horses for so much their
own, when men were on their backs, as otherwise: and withal
they told, that at last, if we had stood all together, and left our
horses, they would have been so eager to have devoured them, that
we might have come off safe, especially having our firearms in our
hands, and being so many in number.

For my part, I was never so sensible of danger in my life; for
seeing above three hundred devils come roaring and open-mouthed
to devour us, and having nothing to shelter us or retreat to, I gave