Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/76

56 that worthy old gentleman gave his gratuitous services: I accordingly engaged him. He was a Chinese, about sixty-five years of age, out of forty of which he had been in the habit of attending, as valet, the merchants who were trading between China and Acapulco; thus oscillating, like a pendulum, during the whole of that period, across ninety-six degrees of longitude. He was, in fact, six feet two inches high, and what he had gained in longitude he had lost in latitude, for he was the thinnest man I ever saw, and he usually went by the title with which I christened him, of Don Quixote, though his right name was Henrico. As I was obliged to provide some animal for my other servant, whom I was not anxious to take with me, I told him he might return on my mule, but, not deeming his services worthy of such recompense, I desired him to deliver it to the gentleman who had now succeeded me in my situation at Mexico.

At eleven o'clock on the 4th of May, I