Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/284

 264 remaining longer at the capital. And yet, with Macbeth, there seemed "nor flying hence, nor tarrying here." The journey to Acapulco was represented as very difficult and dangerous. The route was a mere trail or foot-path, a buen camino de pájaros—a good road for birds. No wheeled vehicle ever had passed or ever could pass over it. All this was, indeed, the case. Three large rivers were to be crossed, and these unbridged. "Suppose," said the advisers, putting the case in that bold and alarming way in which advisers delight, "that these should be swollen by the floods, as is naturally to be expected now in the rainy season. You would then be delayed so long on their banks as to miss your steamer, which touches at Acapulco only once a fortnight. Again, the road lies, for days at a time, in ravines and the beds of streams; but when the waters occupy their channels what room is there for travellers?"

If to this were added the natural reflections of the novice on the score of danger to property and person in entering upon so wild a section, the prospect was not at all a pleasing one. Nevertheless it would be almost too much to expect that a person bound for California should come back to the United States again in order to go there, and I had a firm conviction that the Acapulco trip could be made.

I had negotiated a little already with an arriero, or muleteer, named Vincente Lopez, in a street called Parque del Conde. He would furnish a horse to ride, and a mule to transport my baggage, each for $20 all other expenses to be defrayed personally along the way which makes the three hundred miles come a good deal higher than so much railway travel. I had thus dallied with `