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76 my husband, but Gorgonio had been through the country before and had long been anxious that his "patron" should visit and examine the sites of old towns with which it abounds. As the road was known to be a very rough one, we sent the heavier part of our baggage direct to Rabinal to await our arrival, and only carried sufficient food for ourselves and half rations for the men should tortillas and frijoles perchance fail us.

We tarried at Chiché for a day whilst our arrangements were being made, and on Sunday morning rode out on our way to Uspantan. For the first league we travelled up hill through bare and uninteresting country and then dropped down to Chinic, a village of much the same type as Chiché, but having the advantage of shelter and a good supply of water, which enabled its inhabitants to turn the land round about into a garden of bananas and oranges. After breakfasting in the verandah of the cabildo we set out again, our saddle-bags filled with fresh fruit from the market, which we devoured on the way with an enjoyment only to be felt during a long and dusty ride under a tropical sun.

Our road lay over the range of hills which bounds the Motagua valley on the north side. It was a steep rise and we finally attained a height of 7000 feet, about 2000 feet lower than the pass which we crossed at Los Encuentros on the southern side of the valley. On the hill-tops we passed through some groves of the beautiful small-leaved oaks which are usually met with at this altitude on the Pacific slope, but we could not find any of the yellow calceolarias which my husband had once seen in bloom when he crossed this same range further to the east. Looking down from the hill-tops one is able to appreciate the great extent of the river valley. It is a level-looking plain, thinly covered with pine-trees and seamed by steep-sided barrancas cut by the Motagua and its affluents. The hills on either side were cultivated in patches to their summits, and above the southern range we could still see the peaks of Agua, Fuego, and Atitlan. The day was so enchantingly lovely that we lingered to enjoy the views, to pick the abundant wild-flowers, to rest in the grateful shade of the woods, and generally to drink in the charm of our surroundings, and forgot to fulfil that never-ending task of hurrying up the loitering cargadores, who knew the length of the journey before them much better than we did, but who were more than willing to take advantage of a halt, as they had only partly recovered from the effects of the aguardiente imbibed during a fiesta the day before. When at last we began to urge them on they baulked us at every turn in the track, and were always halting on one excuse or another, so that during two hours we hardly made any progress at all; then about four in the afternoon, when we had hardly commenced the descent on the north side of