Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/517

Rh carried them on their backs and shoulders to Nopa, where they were met by a deputation from Palenque, and transferred to the village. It is a glorious thing in that country to be a padre, and next to being a padre oneself is the position of being a padre's friend. In the afternoon I visited them, but after the fatigues of the journey they were all asleep, and the Indians around the door were talking in low tones so as not to disturb them. Inside were enormous piles of luggage, which showed the prudent care the good ecclesiastics took of themselves. The siesta over, very soon they appeared, one after the other, in dresses, or rather undresses, difficult to describe, but certainly by no means clerical; neither of them had coat or jacket. Two of them were the curas of Tumbala and Ayalon, whom we had seen on our journey. The third was a Franciscan friar from Ciudad Real, and they had come expressly to visit the ruins. All had suffered severely from the journey. The cura of Ayalon was a deputy to Congress, and in Mexico many inquiries had been made of him about the ruins, on the supposition that they were in his neighbourhood, which erroneous supposition he mentioned with a feeling reference to the intervening mountains. The padre of Tumbala was a promising young man of twenty-eight, and weighed at that time about seventeen stone, or 240 pounds: a heavy load to carry about with him over such roads as they had traversed; but the Dominican friar suffered most, and he sat sideways in a hammock, with his vest open, wiping the perspiration from his chest. They were all intelligent men, and, in fact, the circumstance of their making the journey for no other purpose than to visit the ruins was alone an indication of their superior character. The Congress man we had seen on our way through his village, and then were struck with his general knowledge, and particularly with his force of character. He had borne an active part in all the convulsions of the country from the time of the revolution against Spain, of which he had been an instigator; and ever since, to the scandal of the Church party, stood forth as a Liberal; he had played the soldier as well as priest, laying down his blood-stained sword after a battle to confess the wounded and dying; twice wounded, once chronicled among the killed, an exile in Guatimala, and with the gradual recovery of the Liberal party restored to his place and sent as a deputy to Congress, where very soon he was to take part in new convulsions. They were all startled by the stories of mosquitoes, insects, and reptiles at the ruins, and particularly by what they had heard of the condition of my foot.

While we were taking chocolate the cura of Palenque entered. At the time of our first arrival he was absent at another village under his