Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/377

Rh we had travelled together, with the addition that, as to myself, I would have taken a much more questionable companion rather than travel alone; and as to the captain, if he had happened to be thrown ashore on their coast, he would very likely have taken a campaign on their side; that he was not on his way to join the expedition when we met Morazan, and assured him most earnestly that now he understood better the other side of the question, and I would answer for his keeping quiet. Don Rivera Paz, as I felt well assured, was desirous to allay rather than create excitement in the city, received my communication in the best spirit possible, and said the captain had better present himself to the government. I returned to my house, and found the captain alone, already by no means pleased with the turn of his fortunes. My communication did not relieve him, but he accompanied me to the Government House. I could hardly persuade myself that he was the same man whose dashing appearance on the road had often made the women whisper "muy valiente," and whose answer to all intimations of danger was, that a man can only die once. To be sure, the soldiers in the corridor seemed to intimate that they had found him out; the gentlemen in the room surveyed him from head to foot, as if taking notes for an advertisement of his person, and their looks appeared to say they would know him when they met him again. On horseback and with a fair field, the captain would have defied the whole noblesse of Guatimala; but he was completely cowed, spoke only when he was spoken to, and walked out with less effrontery than I supposed possible.

And now I would fain let the reader sit down and enjoy himself quietly in Guatimala, but I cannot. The place did not admit of it. I could not conceal from myself that the Federal Government was broken up; there was not the least prospect of its ever being restored, nor, for a long time to come, of any other being organized in its stead. Under these circumstances I did not consider myself justified in remaining any longer in the country. I was perfectly useless for all the purposes of my mission, and made a formal return to the authorities of Washington, in effect, "after diligent search, no government found."

I was once more my own master, at liberty to go where I pleased, at my own expense, and immediately we commenced making arrangements for our journey to Palenque. We had no time to lose; it was 1,000 miles distant, and the rainy season was approaching, during which part of the road was impassable. There was no one in the city who had ever made the journey. The archbishop, on his exit from Guatimala eight years before, had fled by that road, and since his time