Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 6.djvu/59

1860.] marked the line of the mule-path. Our guide traced it out to us with his finger, and assured us that it traversed a bad portillo, over which the wind sometimes sweeps with such force as to take a loaded mule off his feet, and dash him down the steep sides of the mountain. Half a mile of level ground still intervened between us and the apparent limit of our advance, and we trotted over it in silence, pulling up on the abrupt bank of the deep trough of the river, which foamed and chafed among the great boulders in its bed, and against its rocky shores, nearly a hundred feet below us. A break-neck path wound down to a little sand-pit; and on the opposite side of the stream another path wound up, in like manner, to a narrow plateau, on which stood a single hut, with its surroundings of plantain-trees and maize-fields. I looked anxiously up the stream, but a sudden bend, a few hundred yards above, shut off the view; and there the flinty buttresses of the mountain rose sheer and frowning, perpendicularly from the water's edge.

The eyes of the Lieutenant had followed mine, and we exchanged a glance which expressed as plainly as words, that, unless the mountain-spur which projected into the bend of the river should prove sufficiently narrow to be tunnelled, or should fall off so as to admit of a side-cutting in the rock, our project might be regarded as at an end. To determine that point was our next and most important step. Down the steep descent, scrambling amongst rocks and bushes, where it seemed a goat would hardly dare to venture,—down we plunged to the water's edge. Here the stream was not less than a hundred yards broad, flowing over a rocky bed full of rolling stones and boulders, with a velocity which it seemed impossible for man or beast to stem. But our alcalde was equal to the emergency.

Stripping himself naked, he took a long pole shod with iron, which seemed to be kept here for the purpose, and started out boldly into the stream, for the purpose of making a preliminary survey of the line of passage. Planting his pole firmly down the stream, so as to support himself against the current, he cautiously advanced, step by step, "prospecting" the bottom with his feet, so as to ascertain the shallowest ford, and that freest from rocks and stones. Sometimes he slipped into deep holes and disappeared beneath the surface, but he always recovered himself, and went on with his work with the greatest deliberation and composure. After crossing and recrossing the river in this manner three or four times, he succeeded in fixing on a serpentine line, where the water, except for a few yards near the opposite bank, was only up to his shoulders, and which he pronounced "muy factible" (very feasible).

"But, amigo" exclaimed H., in an excited tone, "you forget that you are six feet high, and that I am but five feet five!"

"No hay cuidado!" (Have no care!) was the reassuring reply of the alcalde, as he slapped his broad chest with his open palm; "soy responsable!" (I am responsible!)

The mules were now unsaddled, and the trunks taken over, one by one, on the alcalde's head. Next, the animals were forced into the water, and, after vehement flounderings, now swimming, now stumbling over rolling stones, they were finally, bruised and bleeding and the forlornest of animals, got across in safety. Next came our turn, and I led the way, with a thong fastened around my body below the armpits, and attached, in like manner, to our stalwart alcalde. Long before we reached the middle of the stream, notwithstanding I carried a large stone under each arm by way of ballast, I was swept from my feet out to the length of my tether, and thus towed over by our guide. When all were snugly across, the laughter was loud and long over the ridiculous figure which everybody had cut in everybody's eyes, except his own. He immortalized the transit in what the French call un croquis, but it would hardly bear reproduction in the pages of a narrative so staid as this.

Intent on determining, with the least