Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/617

Rh seldom goes abroad, and has three sons and a daughter, who never even go out of his sight; and, notwithstanding his enormous wealth, his sons keep a shop in Cosala. It is said, that in 1825, some foreigners offered Don Francisco Iriarte one million of dollars to allow them to work his mine for two years, but that he refused, alleging that he did not want money, and that if he did, he could take a million out himself.

In Cosala, the people have wens in their necks, as in Oposura, but they are even more common, and extend to the men as well as the women: they are also frightfully large, some having double ones. I saw a whole family of women, who had bunches of three or four: they looked like pelicans. They attribute this disease to the water of the neighbourhood.

During the rainy season, the traveller seldom attempts to journey down the coast, as the roads, from the heavy rains, break up, and become impassable: the rivers, too, swell, and the crossing them becomes dangerous. I therefore resolved to cross the Sierra Madre at this place, and to return to Mexico by Durango.

From Cosala to the foot of the mountains, the distance is only five leagues, due east. You stop at a little rancho, called Santa Ana, in the neighbourhood of which there are some veins of silver and magistral. The inhabitants of this place, about twenty in number, had all of them wens, and some are so dreadfully disfigured by them, that to look at one of them is disgusting.

At Santa Ana you enter a glen (La Quebrada), and soon get enveloped by the mountains, which rise almost perpendicularly. The glen is very narrow, and the bed at the entrance is composed of a coarse gravel, with which, after ascending seven or eight leagues, immense blocks of porphyry, granite, lime-stone, and alabaster, are intermixed. There being little sand in the Sierra Madre, at all seasons of the year there is a small stream running down this cañada, but not sufficient to impede the traveller; but after a succession of heavy rains for eight or nine days, the waters increase considerably, and I found it very difficult to ascend. The glen is so crooked that it was necessary to cross it every two or three minutes, and in many places to ride