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Rh detail, to ensure, as I was told, the unquestioned passage of the goods into the State of Chiapas, but to a great extent, as I believe, to satisfy their own curiosity as to what the cases contained, and to give employment to the superabundant clerks who draw salaries and tumble over one another in all Spanish-American ports. At last my preparations were finished: Mr. Price, who had volunteered to come out from England and assist as a surveyor, had joined me, and I had secured a small steamer belonging to Messrs. Jamet y Sastre, a firm engaged in the mahogany trade, to take us up the river. In Laguna I had made the acquaintance of M. Chambon, a young Frenchman who was travelling through Mexico, and asked him to accompany us, as he wished to make his way to Tenosique, in hope of being able to pay a visit to the ruins of Menché.

As usual there was some delay in starting, and after we had crossed the big lagoon and passed through the narrow passage into the smaller one our troubles began. We had missed the top of the tide and found it running out strongly against us and we stuck on one sand-bank after another; at last we reached the mouth of the river, where huge alligators lay sunning themselves on the sand-spits, and here, where the stream was at its narrowest, we stuck fast; there was no chance of getting off until the tide rose on the morrow. Then began a night of torment. The mosquitos were monsters and they came off to us in myriads: we had no nets to protect us against their attacks, and the only thing to be done was to roll one's self up in a rug in a beddingless bunk and swelter until morning. Soon after sunrise we were afloat again and entered the broad stream of the river. The land was still low and there was not a hill in sight, but gradually the banks grew firmer and lost their swampy appearance. A short distance above the village of Palisada, which we passed before dark, the river divides in its downward course, the other half of the stream flowing to the west and reaching the sea below Frontera. Above this fork the Usumacinta is a fine broad stream, sometimes more than half a mile from bank to bank. On the third day we reached the little village of Monte Cristo, which was to be our starting-place for the ruins of Palenque; and here we parted from M. Chambon, who continued his voyage in the steamer to Tenosique.

At Monte Cristo we fell into good hands: Don Carlos Majares, who kept the largest of the two or three village stores, gave us a big shed in which to house our baggage and hang up our hammocks, and he and Don Adolfo Erezuma did their best to help us on our way, but the difficulties could not be overcome in a hurry. The ruins of Palenque lay buried in the forest forty miles away, and as pack-mules and carriers were equally scarce nearly a fortnight passed before we had succeeded in despatching the most necessary