Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/45

Rh alligator crop of Cayutlan, will be to any serious extent the smaller next season, on account of our visit.

When we had gone about twelve miles up the lake, the flotilla came to a halt opposite a beautiful rocky island covered with giant cacti. All the boats came together, and in a few minutes the entire party was engaged in discussing, with keen relish, a bountiful lunch. When the repast was finished, Gov. Cueva proposed, as a sentiment, "Welcome to our distinguished guest; peace, and a better understanding, and more perfect friendly relation between the people and Government of the great Republic of the United States, and the people and Government of the Republic of Mexico." The toast was drank with the honors, and duly responded to, and the flotilla again moved up the Laguna.

At 2, we reached the landing at the eastern end of the lake, and found two light, Concord spring coaches, sent down from the interior for our use, and a multitude of attendants waiting to receive us. They had a full pack-train of mules ready to carry the baggage up to Colima, but the piles on piles of plunder which came on shore from our boats until the whole beach was strewn with it, startled them not a little, and made some of the mules drop their ears in utter dejection. The mules in common use all over the country are the smallest I have ever seen. Some of them do not weigh, more than two hundred pounds, and it is a large sized one which will weigh three hundred and fifty or four-hundred pounds: but like the little horses of the country, they are "lightning" when it comes to traveling or pulling.

Three leagues—about seven and a half or at most eight English miles—across a flat sandy country, entirely