Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/313

CH. XX.] minute-timed posters and Macadamized surfaces to guard them against the duly unpremeditated shock of a stone or of a moment's delay, can hardly appreciate the pleasure of a journey in which every twenty yards will offer some fresh difficulty to encounter. The road for about a league from the post we had left was of the latter description; but not one tenth part so bad as some tracts which I had passed in my journey from Mexico to Vera Cruz, and might be considered in the language of the country as, "corriente", or very tolerable.

I gave two rials, about a shilling, for a hat full of peaches, to some Indians who were carrying them to market, and found that I had paid considerably more than their value: they were pretty well flavoured, but by no means equal to the peaches cultivated in the common gardens of England, being more like apricots than peaches both in appearance and in taste. The delicious quality of what may be termed European fruits, found in these countries, has been