Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/457

Rh. Circumstances induced him to make a journey into the interior, and he established himself at Ciudad Real. At the time of the cholera in Central America he went to Quezaltenango, where he was employed by the government, and lived two years on intimate terms with the unfortunate General Guzman, whom he described as one of the most gentlemanly, amiable, intelligent, and best men in the country. He afterwards returned to Comitan, and married a lady of a once rich and powerful family, but stripped of a portion of its wealth by a revolution only two years before. In the division of what was left, the house on the plaza fell to his share; and disliking the practice of his profession, he abandoned it, and took to selling goods. Like every other stranger in the country, by reason of constant wars and revolutions, he had become nervous. He had none of this feeling when he first arrived, and at the time of the first revolution in Ciudad Real he stood in the plaza looking on, when two men were shot down by his side. Fortunately, he took them into a house to dress their wounds, and during this time the attacking party forced their way into the plaza, and cut down every man in it.

Up to this place we had travelled on the road to Mexico; here Pawling was to leave us, and go on to the capital; Palenque lay on our right, toward the coast of the Atlantic. The road Dr. M'Kinney described as more frightful than any we had yet travelled; and there were other difficulties. War was again in our way; and, while all the rest of Mexico was quiet, Tobasco and Yucatan, the two points in our journey, were in a state of revolution. This might not have disturbed us greatly but for another difficulty. It was necessary to present ourselves at Ciudad Real, three days' journey directly out of our road, to procure a passport, without which we could not travel in any part of the Mexican republic. And, serious as these things were, they merged in a third; viz. the government of Mexico had issued a peremptory order to prevent all strangers visiting the ruins of Palenque. Dr. M'Kinney told us of his own knowledge that three Belgians, sent out on a scientific expedition by the Belgian government, had gone to Ciudad Real expressly to ask permission to visit them, and had been refused. These communications damped somewhat the satisfaction of our arrival in Comitan.

By Dr. M'Kinney's advice we presented ourselves immediately to the commandant, who had a small garrison of about thirty men, well uniformed and equipped, and, compared with the soldiers of Central America, giving me a high opinion of the Mexican army. I showed him my passport, and a copy of the government paper of Guatimala, which fortunately stated that I intended going to Campeachy to embark