Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/229

CH. XIV.] on the part of Messrs. Simmonds, and two Frenchmen. After they had left, he showed me into a small library, so completely filled with books, in large masses, not only around the walls but on the floor, that it was with difficulty we could pick a way through the apartment. He sat himself down to a small writing table, which was also profusely stored with manuscripts and printed papers, from which he selected for me, with a zeal of earnestness and gratification heightened by the enthusiasm of his natural disposition, some documents which he had been preparing or collecting for my use. Amongst these, was a detailed statement of the branches of the revenue, preceding and subsequent to the revolution;—the bases of the constitution;—a plan for a factory of tobacco in Gualan—and another for the settling with foreigners the territory bordering upon the port and river of San Juan in Nicaragua. He had all the mania of authorship about him: proofs and revises and lumps of manuscript, folios and quartos and