Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/307

CH. XX.] bags for market: the quantity was considerable, and might be worth from 4,000 to 5,000 dollars.

In the evening, I was applied to on the part of one of these damsels, for my medical assistance and advice. As I have somewhere before observed that it is useless for any Englishman to express his ignorance or incapacity, as the people will have you to be well acquainted with every thing relating to the healing art, I desired the patient to be introduced:—she was a bouncing young woman of about eighteen years of age, plump and rosy: her large dark-gray eyes were sparkling and animated, and she had altogether the appearance of vigorous health. As she came into the apartment, I was aroused from a half doze which I was taking on one of the two beds with which the room was furnished: the other had been occupied by Don José my companion; but he had finished his siesta and had gone:—when a man knows but little about a case, it is