Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/437

Rh so short a time since, I was called in to counsel for the safety of a man of the cura's character and station. Relatively, the most respectable clergyman in our country does not stand higher than he did.

The next morning we were invited to breakfast with another friend and counsellor, and about as strange a one as myself, being the old lady who had sent the cura 100 dollars, before mentioned. The plan was discussed and settled, and in the course of the day two friends undertook to visit Guatimala on the cura's behalf. We intended that day to ascend the volcano of Quezaltenango, but were disappointed in our guide. In the morning we made purchases and provisions for continuing our journey, and as one of our mules' backs was badly galled, we requested the gobernador to procure us Indian carriers.

In the afternoon, in company with the corregidor, we rode to the warm springs of Almolonga. The road crosses a spur of the volcano, and descends precipitously into a deep valley, in which, about a league distant, stand the village and hot springs. There is a good bathing- house, at which we were not allowed to pay, being considered the guests of the city. Outside, in a beautiful natural reservoir, Indian men, women, and children were bathing together.

We returned by another road, passing up a valley of extraordinary beauty, and the theme of conversation was the happiness the country might enjoy but for wars and revolutions. Beautiful as it was, all wished to leave it, and seek a land where life was safe—Mexico or El Norte. Toward evening, descending the spur of the volcano, we met several hundred Indians returning from the ceremonies of the Holy Week, and exceeding in drunkenness all the specimens we had yet encountered. In one place a man and woman, the latter with a child on her back, were staggering so near the brink of a precipice, that the corregidor dismounted and took the child from them, and made them go before us into the town.

There was no place we had visited, except mined cities, so unique and interesting, and which deserved to be so thoroughly explored, as Quezaltenango. A month, at least, might be satisfactorily and profitably employed in examining the many curious objects in the country around. For botanical researches it is the richest region in Central America. But we had no time even for rest. I passed the evening in writing, packing things to be sent to Guatimala, among others my quezal, which, however, never arrived, and in writing letters, one of which was on account of the cura, and in which, intending, even if it fell into wrong hands, to be out of the country myself, I spoke in no measured terms of the atrocity committed by Carrera.