Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/367

CH. XXIV.] on my taking his bedstead, which he assisted in putting up, and contented himself with the piece of ticking which was to be united to the stands and stretchers to form my clumsy couch. The air was cold and damp, and having partially defended ourselves from the rain by suspending a mat to the weather-side of the portico, we slept pretty comfortably till six o'clock the next morning; when we renewed our journey.

The gentleman, to whom I had been indebted for such well-timed hospitality on the preceding evening, was the younger brother of Don Gregorio Salazar, the gefe politico, and I continued to find that I had made a great acquisition in so respectable a travelling companion. He was going to Belize on commercial business. He might be about twenty years of age, was tall, manly and very sedate: all his movements were like clock work; his words were also regulated by the utmost precision and decorum: he spoke little, but what he did say was uttered with such affability and kindness,