Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/52

32 we halted to collect our scattered forces. Hanging up by a hook in the entry, along with various other dead animals, polecats, weasels, &c., was the ugliest creature I ever beheld. It seemed a species of dog, with a hunch back, a head like a wolf, and no neck, a perfect monster. As far as I can make out it must be the itzcuin tepotzotli, mentioned by some old Mexican writers. The people had brought it up in the house, and killed it on account of its fierceness. This inn stands in the valley of Guajimalco, and is about a league from the Desierto.

There is no longer any road there, but a steep and winding path through the beautiful woods. Therefore those who had come in coaches, were now obliged to proceed on donkeys, with Indian guides. The beauty of the scenery is indescribable. The path winds ascending through a wilderness of trees and flowering shrubs, bathed by a clear and rapid rivulet, and every now and then, through the arched forest trees, are glimpses of the snowy volcanoes and of the distant domes and lakes of Mexico.

The ruins of the old Carmelite convent, standing on the slope of a hill, are surrounded by noble forests of pine and oak and cedar; long and lofty forest-aisles, where the monks of former days wandered in peaceful meditation. But they removed from this beautiful site to another, said to be equally beautiful and wilder, also called the Desierto, but much farther from Mexico; and this fertile region (which the knowing eye of a Yankee would instantly discover to be full of capabilities in the way of machinery) belongs to no one, and lies here deserted, in solitary