Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/444

424 shirt and linen trowsers: one was too much exhausted even to smoke, and all four of them seemed as if they would hardly recover the effects of the exertions they had undergone, and the heat which they were now enduring.

The Guatemalians suffer exceedingly in these trips to Belize: they consider it a journey of great peril, and it is asserted that three persons out of five are sure to fall victims to it; but I think this is an exaggerated statement; perhaps one in three would be nearer the fact; though, in the instance of the diplomatic and official characters who arrived there, from the United States, whilst I was in the country, two out of three died from the effects of the climate: the return from Belize to Guatemala is worse than the voyage thither: the difficulty of going up the narrow straits and the gulf, owing to the strong current, renders the voyage most tedious, whereas, however opposite may be the wind, you cannot help drifting down with the stream.