Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/448

370 branches dead. Before us, between these immense walls, was a vista reaching beyond the village of San Andres, twenty-four miles distant. A stream of water was dashing down over rocks and stones, hurrying on to the Atlantic; we crossed it perhaps fifty times on bridges wide and rude as the stream itself and the mountains between which it rolled. As we descended, the temperature became milder. At twelve o'clock the immense ravine opened into a rich valley a mile in width, and in half an hour we reached the village of Todos Santos. On the right, far below us, was a magnificent table-land cultivated with corn, and bounded by the side of the great sierra; and in the suburbs of the village were apple and peach-trees covered with blossoms and young fruit. We had again reached the tierras templadas, and in Europe or North America the beauty of this miserable unknown village would be a theme for poetry.

As we rode through it, at the head of the street we were stopped by a drunken Indian, supported by two men hardly able to stand themselves, who, we thought, were taking him to prison; but, staggering before us, they blocked up the passage, and shouted, "Pasaporte!” Pawling, in anticipation, and to assume his new character, had tied his jacket around his waist by the sleeves, and was dragging one of the mules by its halter. Not one of the three could read the passport and they sent for the secretary, a bare-headed Indian, habited in nothing but a ragged cotton shirt, who examined it very carefully, and read aloud the name of Rafael Carrera, which, I think, was all that he attempted to make out. We were neither sentimental, nor philosophical, nor moralizing travellers, but it gave us pangs to think that such a magnificent country was in the possession of such men.

Passing the church and convent, we ascended a ridge, then descended an immense ravine, crossed another magnificent valley, and at length reached the Indian village of San Martin, which, with loveliness and grandeur all around us, might have been selected for its surpassing beauty of position. We rode to the cabildo, and then to the hut of the alcalde. The people were all Indians; the secretary was a barelegged boy, who spelled out every word in the passport except our names; but his reading sufficed to procure supper for us, and provender for the mules, and early in the morning we pushed on again.

For some distance we rode on a lofty ridge, with a precipitous ravine on each side, in one place so narrow that, as our arriero told us, when the wind is high there is danger of being blown off. We continued descending, and at a quarter-past twelve reached San Andres Petapan, fifteen miles distant, blooming with oranges, sapotes,