Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/411

CH. XXIX.] forward; a staff in his hand to support him from slipping down from the narrow crooked paths which often ran along the edge of precipices, and with nothing else but a pair of short drawers to encumber him in the way of dress: he asked two or three pertinent questions of the chief muleteer, and darted off into the thickest of the forest: in less than half an hour we saw him at a distance coming up to us with the lost mule: in the interim, I had undergone much apprehension that the animal would not be found, and of course concluded that it was the one which carried the only baggage which I should have been really distressed at losing,—I mean my despatches. By an extraordinary coincidence this was the very fact, and I was, naturally, the more delighted in witnessing the mule's arrival. The question which Murillo had asked of the muleteer shewed his knowledge of the nature of the animal and his own peculiar fitness and utility as a conductor in travels of this difficult nature: he had inquired