them on with a stick and yells of "arre!" "arriba!" followed by a burst of expletives, throughout the sultry uncomfortable day. The track was of the worst description. A long drought had parched all colour from the hills, and the fringe of vegetation along the banks of the Copan River was the only green thing to be seen. The path followed the winding of this stream for a long distance, often high above it, then crossing it, again rising and winding along narrow ledges, turning sharp corners and revealing fine bits of landscape which would have been beautiful in a less parched condition. Before sunset we reached our camping-ground for the night, a spot named La Laguna; but there was no lagoon there, only a clearing by the roadside, and the nearest water was half a league distant.
It was a stifling night and we hailed the dawn with pleasure and set off again as soon as the tent could be packed and the twenty-five mules loaded. A short ride brought us again to the Copan River; but as the ford was too deep for the cargo-mules we parted company, leaving them to follow a track along the right bank, whilst we rode through the stream, barely escaping a wetting, and took a short cut by the villages of Jocotan and Comitan, which stand about a mile apart. To judge from the size of the churches, these two villages must at one time have been important towns: now they are squalid, half-deserted places, where pigs and goats alone seem to flourish, and the huge dilapidated churches would be capable of holding not only the whole of the sallow-faced, dyspeptic-looking population, but nearly all the houses as well. At Comitan, the last village before reaching the Honduras frontier, the Alcalde stopped us and demanded Gorgonio's passport. This document was produced, but he was nevertheless taken to the Cabildo, where it was copied and viséd before he, as a citizen, was allowed to leave his own country. No one being in the least interested in us we rode on, leaving Gorgonio to follow when all the formalities had been gone through.
For the rest of the day we passed through a pleasant green country, well watered and well wooded, and late in the afternoon rejoined our pack-train, and reached the little settlement of Cachapa, where, relying on the friendly shelter of the school-house, we drew up before its mud walls, and proceeded to stack our boxes in the verandah, whilst Gorgonio went off to hunt up the schoolmaster and get the key of the door. He soon came back in company with the Indian Alcalde, to tell us that the schoolmaster had gone away for a few days; and it seemed as though we were about partly to repeat our experience at the school-house at Jícaro, with the difference that this time, according to the Alcalde, it was the schoolmaster who was "muy delicado" and would greatly resent such an intrusion into his house. The schoolmaster had evidently established himself as a power in the village, for the
