Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/354

334 mules: I saw the long spare figure of the Chinese standing in the door-way, as motionless as an image: he was waiting for me to awake; for, having been all his life servant to old Spaniards, he was fearful of disturbing my rest: he stood vacant and fixed as the meridian of Greenwich, and as undefinable as its longitude:—I considered him as the point of my departure, and immediately arose, being anxious about the nature of my unknown journey and the dispositions necessary for making it practicable.

About nine o'clock, four of the mules were loaded, and every thing seemed in a state of readiness for departure except my servant. The cool rainy nights which we had experienced for the last three weeks had greatly deranged his feelings of comfort: he had never existed except upon the eastern coasts of China and the western of Mexico; and had never enjoyed his health so well as at Acapulco. The climate of Guatemala, at this season, was almost death