Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/204

 slightly more comfortable than the other. The next day we rode back to Amecameca. When Señor Llandesio, Professor of the Fine Arts at Mexico, made this ascent, as he did in 1866, he says that he found two attempts necessary before he succeeded. I have the pamphlet in which he describes it. "The guide and peon whispered together continually," he says, "which made me think they were going to play us some trick."

Sure enough, they did. After a good way up they represented that it was perilous, impossible, to go farther. He descended, and had taken his seat in the diligencia to return to Mexico, when he met another party, with more honest guides, and, turning back with them, this time succeeded. He describes a young man so fatigued on the mountain that he desired, with tears in his eyes, to be left to die. Another succumbed owing to the singular cause, that he had fancied that ardent spirits would have no effect in the peculiarly attenuated atmosphere, and had emptied nearly a whole bottle of brandy.

Señor Llandesio was told by the Indians that they believed in a genius of the mountain, whom they called Cuantelpostle. He was a queer little man, who dwelt about the Pico del Fraile, helped the workmen at their labors when in a good humor, and embarrassed them as much as possible when in a bad. They said, also, that presents were offered by some to propitiate the volcano, for the purpose of obtaining rain, and the like. These were buried in the sand, and the places marked by a flat stone. This practice may account for some of the discoveries of Charnay, who unearthed about the foot of the mountain much interesting pottery.