With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 2

The Big Trees, as they are technically called, are of a light, bright cinnamon color, and have a diameter at the ground of from twenty-five to forty feet, a height of from three hundred to four hundred and fifty feet, and a bark that will average one foot and a half in thickness where it has not been molested.I have seen blocks of bark that would measure thirty-two inches in thickness, and I have no doubt but some trees have bark that would average nearly three feet.The texture is loose and spongy, and when cut transversely it is often worked into pincushions and such like toys.The wood is light as the cedar, but is susceptible of a very fine polish.I had a cane made from a piece that I bought of the guide, and I found it would polish equal to mahogany.The Mariposa grove is a State park, together with Yosemite Valley, given by the United States government.

This grove, “together with the Yosemite Valley with its branches and spurs, an estimated length of fifteen miles, and in average width one mile back from the edge of the precipice on each side of the valley, with the stipulation, nevertheless, that the State shall accept this grant on the express condition that the premises shall be held for public use and recreation, and shall be inalienable for all time.”So it is absolutely impossible to get a bit of bark or piece of wood except from the guide, who is allowed to gather them from the outskirts of the grove from a tree that has fallen or one that stands outside of the prescribed limits.

There has but one fallen, however, since their discovery, and that was felled by men’s hands. It was done by immense augers. It took five men twenty-two days to fell the tree, equal to the services of one man for one hundred and ten days. Think of that, nearly four months’ work, not counting any time lost by Sundays, or rainy days, or sickness, to fell one tree! That tree would have yielded more than a thousand cords of four-foot wood and a hundred cords of bark, more than eleven hundred cords altogether.On the stump of this tree there is a house—“whose foundation is sure”—thirty feet in diameter.This house contains room enough in square feet, if it were the right shape, for a parlor twelve by sixteen, a dining-room ten by twelve, a kitchen ten by twelve, two bedrooms ten feet square each, a pantry four by eight feet, two clothes-presses one and a half feet deep and four feet wide, and still have a little to spare.

The foliage of these trees resembles the cedar somewhat.They bear a cone not more than two inches in length, and a black pitch bitter as gall.The forests at present have a gloomy appearance, as some time in the past, no one knows when, the Indians, the better to facilitate their hunting, burned off the chaparral and rubbish, and, as a matter of course, disfigured the trees by burning off nearly all the bark.

The first sight of these monarchs is one of sore disappointment.For you have travelled many miles where the trees are all large, and here, surrounded as they are by immense pines, their magnitude is not appreciated.But their greatness grows very rapidly upon you, so that if there was at first disappointment, there is now a greater awe.Our first view of interest was the Fallen Monarch, a ponderous old trunk stretched out upon the ground for more than two hundred feet, upon which a stage and four horses could be driven with ease.We had to go a hundred feet towards the top to climb upon the trunk.The diameter of this tree, without bark, at the base is twenty-two feet; one hundred feet from the root it is twelve feet.

How long this monarch has been sleeping no one pretends to know. The guide says it is no more decayed now, to all appearances, than it was when first discovered. The tree of greatest interest is the Grizzly Giant, which has an altitude of more than three hundred feet. The first thing we did to try its magnitude was to surround it on horseback, passing around in single file, the head of one horse to the tail of another. It called into requisition twenty-five horses out of the twenty-eight in our party to complete the measurement. This is not considered strictly correct, mathematically speaking, but it indicates the size of the tree by horse measurement

I had prepared myself with a good-sized string, and, with the help of a friend, made close calculation four feet from the ground, and found it to be ninety-three feet, giving a diameter of thirty-one feet.This tree has a limb one hundred feet from the ground that is six feet in diameter.These trees stand around us in quiet grandeur, but to write of one is to write of many, hence the reader must not be wearied with a notice of each.Pluto’s Chimney is a hollow tree, standing upright, into which several of us rode on horseback.Yonder is another that had fallen in some past age, and sixty feet or more of it had burned from the root upward, and then towards the top had burned in two, leaving a barrel-shaped or hollow part of the trunk some fifty feet in length.Through this we all rode without any inconvenience.I have understood that several have ridden abreast through it, which I do not think improbable.

This completed our tour among these forest giants. There are two groves—and, properly speaking, but two—of these Sequoia gigantea, the Mariposa and Calaveras groves.The first is about twenty miles south of Yosemite Valley, perhaps a little more, while the latter is some fifty miles northwest of the valley.Thus it will be seen that they are not, as many suppose, in the great Yosemite Valley.

The big trees of California, not of this species, however, are not confined to these two groves. Many of the noted redwood species (Sequoia sempervirens) used to grow back of Santa Cruz, many of which are standing yet that were very great in size.We once upon a time, with five others, rode into one of these during a storm.The butt was hollow, and large enough to hold at least twelve men on horseback, and was not less than two hundred and fifty feet in height.

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THE CHINESE QUARTER IN SAN FRANCISCO.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

Sing, Wo & Co. keep one of the most picturesque shops on Jackson Street. It is neither grocer’s, nor butcher’s, nor fishmonger’s, nor druggist’s; but a little of all four. It is like most of the shops on Jackson Street, part cellar, part cellar-stairs, part sidewalk, and part back bedroom. On the sidewalk are platters of innumerable sorts of little fishes,—little silvery fishes; little yellow fishes, with whiskers; little snaky fishes; round flat fishes; little slices of big fishes,—never too much or too many of any kind. Sparing and thrifty dealers, as well as sparing and thrifty consumers, are the Celestials. Round tubs of sprouted beans; platters of square cakes of something whose consistency was like Dutch cheese, whose color was vivid yellow, like baker’s gingerbread, and whose tops were stamped with mysterious letters; long roots, as long as the longest parsnips, but glistening white, like polished turnips; cherries, tied up in stingy little bunches of ten or twelve, and swung in all the nooks; small bunches of all conceivable green things, from celery down to timothy grass, tied tight and wedged into corners, or swung overhead; dried herbs, in dim recesses; pressed chickens, on shelves (those were the most remarkable things.They were semi-transparent, thin, skinny, and yellow, and looked almost more like huge, flattened grasshoppers than like chickens; but chickens they were, and no mistake),—all these were on the trays, on the sidewalk, and on the cellar-stairs.

In the back bedroom were Mrs. Sing and Mrs. Wo, with several little Sings and Wos.It was too dark to see what they were doing; for the only light came from the open front of the shop, which seemed to run back like a cave in a hill.On shelves on the sides were teacups and teapots, and plates of fantastic shapes and gay colors.Sing and Wo were most courteous; but their interest centred entirely on sales; and I could learn but one fact from them in regard to any of their goods.It was either “Muchee good.Englis man muchee like,” or else, “China man like; Englis man no like.”Why should I wish to know anything further than that some articles would be agreeable to “Englis man’s” palate, and others would not?This must be enough to regulate my purchases.But I shall always wish I knew how those chickens were fattened and what the vivid yellow cakes were made of.

Moo, On & Co.come next.Their shop is full, crowded full,—bags, bundles, casks, shelves, piles, bunches of utterly nondescript articles.It sounds like an absurd exaggeration, but it is literally true, that the only articles in his shop which I ever saw before are bottles.There are a few of those; but the purpose, use, or meaning of every other article is utterly unknown to me.There are things that look like games, like toys, like lamps, like idols, like utensils of lost trades, like relics of lost tribes, like—well, like a pawnbroker’s stock, just brought from some other world.That comes nearest to it.

Moo, On & Co.have apparently gone back for more.Nobody is in the shop; the door is wide open.I wait and wait, hoping that some one will come along who can speak English, and of whom I may ask what this extraordinary show means.Timidly I touch a fluttering bit, which hangs outside.It is not paper; it is not cloth; it is not woollen, silk, nor straw; it is not leather; it is not cobweb; it is not alive; it is not dead; it crisps and curls at my touch; it waves backward, though no air blows it.A sort of horror seizes me.It may be a piece of an ancestor of Moo’s doing ghostly duty at his shop door.I hasten on and half fancy that it is behind me, as I halt before Dr. Li Po Tai’s door.His promises to cure, diplomas, and so forth, are printed in gay-colored strips of labels on each side.Six bright balloons swing overhead; and peacocks’ feathers are stuck into the balloons.I have heard that Dr. Li Po Tai is a learned man, and works cures.His balloons are certainly very brilliant....

Then comes a corner stand, with glass cases of candy. Almond candy, with grains of rice thick on the top; little bowls of pickles, pears, and peppers; platters of odd-shaped nuts; and beans baked black as coffee.As I stand looking curiously at these, a well-dressed Chinaman pauses before me, and making a gesture with his hand towards the stand, says, “All muchee good.Buy eat.Muchee good.”Hung Wung, the proprietor, is kindled to hospitality by this, and repeats the words, “Yaas, muchee good.Take, eat,” offering me, with the word, the bowl of peppers.

Next comes a very gay restaurant, the best in the empire.Hang Fee, Low & Co.keep it, and foreigners go there to drink tea.There is a green railed balcony across the front, swinging full of high-colored lanterns, round and square; tablets with Chinese letters on bright grounds are set in panels on the walls; a huge rhinoceros stands in the centre of the railing: a tree grows out of the rhinoceros’s back, and an India rubber man sits at the foot of the tree.China figures and green bushes in flower-pots are ranged all along the railing.Nowhere except in the Chinese Empire can there be seen such another gaudy, grotesque house front.We make an appointment on the spot to take some of Hang Fee’s tea, on our way to the Chinese Theatre, the next evening, and then we hurry home....

After all, we did not take tea at Hang Fee’s on our way to the theatre. There was not time. As it was, we were late; and when we entered the orchestra had begun to play. Orchestra! It is necessary to use that name, I suppose, in speaking of a body of men with instruments, who are seated on a stage, furnishing what is called music for a theatrical performance. But it is a term calculated to mislead in this instance. Fancy one frog-pond, one Sunday-school with pumpkin whistles, one militia training, and two gongs for supper on a Fall River boat, all at once, and you will have some faint idea of the indescribable noise which saluted our ears on entering that theatre. To say that we were deafened is nothing.The hideous hubbub of din seemed to overlap and transcend all laws and spheres of sound.It was so loud we could not see; it was so loud we could not breathe; it was so loud there did not seem to be any room to sit down!The theatre was small and low and dark.The pit and greater part of the gallery were filled with Chinamen, all smoking.One corner of the gallery was set aside for women.That was full, also, with Chinese women.Every woman’s hair was dressed in the manner I have described [“drawn back from her forehead, twisted tight from the nape of the neck to the crown of the head, stiffened with glue, glistening with oil, and made into four huge double wings, which stood out beyond her ears on either side.It looked a little like two gigantic black satin bats, pinned to the back of her head, or still more like a windmill gone into mourning.”] The bat-like flaps projected so far on each side of each head that each woman seemed almost to be joined to her neighbors by a cartilaginous band; and, as they sat almost motionless, this effect was heightened.

The stage had no pretence of secrecy.It was hung with gay banners and mysterious labels.Tall plumes of peacock’s feathers in the corners and some irregularly placed chairs were all the furniture.The orchestra sat in chairs at the back of the stage.Some of them smoked in the intervals, some drank tea.A little boy who drummed went out when he felt like it; and the fellow with the biggest gong had evidently no plan of operations at all except to gong as long as his arms could bear it, then rest a minute, then gong again.

“Oh, well,” said we, as we wedged and squeezed through the narrow passage-way which led to our box, “it will only last a few minutes. We shall not entirely lose our hearing.” Fatal delusion. It never stopped. The actors came out; the play began; the play went on; still the hideous hubbub of din continued, and was made unspeakably more hideous by the voices of the actors, which were raised to the shrillest falsetto to surmount the noise, and which sounded like nothing in nature except the voices of frantic cats....

At first, in spite of the deafening loudness of the din, it is ludicrous beyond conception.To see the superbly dressed Chinese creatures,—every one of them as perfectly and exquisitely dressed as the finest figures on their satin fans or rice-paper pictures, and looking exactly like them,—to see these creatures strutting and sailing and sweeping and bowing and bending, beating their breasts and tearing their beards, gesticulating and rushing about in an utterly incomprehensible play, with caterwauling screams issuing from their mouths, is for a few minutes so droll that you laugh till tears run, and think you will go to the Chinese Theatre every night as long as you stay in San Francisco.I said so to the friend who had politely gone with me.He had been to the performance before.He smiled pityingly, and yawned behind his hand.At the end of half an hour, I whispered, “Twice a week will do.”In fifteen minutes more, I said, “I think we will go out now.I can’t endure this racket another minute.But, nevertheless, I shall come once more, with an interpreter.I must and will know what all this mummery means.”

The friend smiled again incredulously. But we did go again, with an interpreter; and the drollest thing of all was to find out how very little all the caterwauling and rushing and bending and bawling and sweeping and strutting really meant. The difficulty of getting an interpreter was another interesting feature in the occasion. A lady, who had formerly been a missionary in China, had promised to go with us; and, as even she was not sure of being able to understand Chinese caterwauled, she proposed to take one of the boys from the missionary school, to interpret to her before she interpreted to us.So we drove to the school.Mrs. —— went in.The time seemed very long that we waited.At last she came back, looking both amused and vexed, to report that not one of those intelligent Christian Chinese would leave his studies that evening to go to the theatre.

“I suppose it is an old story to them,” said I.

“Not at all,” said she.“On the contrary, hardly a boy there has been inside the theatre.But they cannot bear to lose a minute from their lessons.Mr. Loomis really urged some of them; but it was of no use.”

In a grocery store on Kearny Street, however, we found a clever young man, less absorbed in learning; and he went with us as interpreter. Again the same hideous din; the same clouds of smoke; the same hubbub of caterwauling. But the dramatis personæ were few. Luckily for us, our first lesson in the Chinese drama was to be a simple one. And here I pause, considering whether my account of the play will be believed. This is the traveller’s great perplexity. The incredible things are always the only things worth telling; but is it best to tell them?

The actors in this play were three,—a lady of rank, her son, and her man cook.The play opened with a soliloquy by the lady.She is sitting alone, sewing.Her husband has gone to America; he did not bid her farewell.Her only son is at school.She is sad and lonely.She weeps.

Enter boy.He asks if dinner is ready.

Enter cook.Cook says it is not time.Boy says he wants dinner.Cook says he shall not have it.This takes fifteen minutes.

Mother examines boy on his lessons. Boy does not know them; tries to peep. Mother reproves; makes boy kneel; prepares to whip; whips.Mother weeps; boy catches flies on the floor; bites her finger.

Enter cook to see what the noise means.Cook takes boy to task.Boy stops his ears.Cook bawls.Cook kneels to lady; reproves her also; tells her she must keep her own temper, if she would train her boy.

Lady sulks, naturally.Boy slips behind and cuts her work out of her embroidery frame.Cook attacks boy.Cook sings a lament, and goes out to attend to dinner; but returns in frantic distress.During his absence everything has boiled over; everything has been burned to a crisp.Dinner is ruined.Cook now reconciles mother and son; drags son to his knees; makes him repeat words of supplication.While he does this cook turns his back to the audience, takes off his beard carefully, lays it on the floor, while he drinks a cupful of tea.

This is all, literally all.It took an hour and a half.The audience listened with intensest interest.The gesticulations, the expressions of face, the tones of the actors, all conveyed the idea of the deepest tragedy.Except for our interpreter, I should have taken the cook for a soothsayer, priest, a highwayman and murderer, alternately.I should have supposed that all the dangers, hopes, fears, delights possible in the lives of three human beings were going on on that stage.Now we saw how very far-fetched and preposterous had probably been our theories of the play we had seen before, we having constructed a most brilliant plot from our interpretation of the pantomime.

After this domestic drama came a fierce spectacular play, too absurd to be described, in which nations went to war because a king’s monkey had been killed. And the kings and their armies marched in at one door and out at the other, sat on gilt thrones, fought with gilt swords, tumbled each other head over heels with as much vigor and just as much art as small boys play the battle of Bunker Hill with the nursery chairs on a rainy day.But the dresses of these warlike monarchs were gorgeous and fantastic beyond description.Long, gay-colored robes, blazoned and blazing with gold and silver embroidery; small flags, two on each side, stuck in at their shoulders, and projecting behind; helmets, square breastplates of shining stones, and such decorations with feathers as pass belief.Several of them had behind each ear a long, slender bird-of-Paradise feather.These feathers reached out at least three feet behind, and curved and swayed with each step the man took.When three or four of these were on the stage together, marching and countermarching, wrestling, fighting, and tumbling, why these tail feathers did not break, did not become entangled with each other, no mortal can divine.Others had huge wings of silver filigree-work behind their ears.These also swayed and flapped at each step.

Sometimes there would be forty or fifty of these nondescript creatures on the stage at once, running, gesticulating, attacking, retreating, howling, bowing, bending, tripping each other up, stalking, strutting, and all the while caterwauling, and all the time the drums beating, the gongs ringing, and the stringed instruments and the castanets and the fifes playing.It was dazzling as a gigantic kaleidoscope and deafening as a cotton-mill.After the plays came wonderful tumbling and somersaulting.To see such gymnastic feats performed by men in long damask nightgowns and with wide trousers is uncommonly droll.This is really the best thing at the Chinese Theatre,—the only thing, in fact, which is not incomprehensibly childish.

My last glimpse at the Chinese Empire was in Mr. Loomis’s Sunday-school. I had curiosity to see the faces of the boys who had refused our invitation to the theatre. As soon as I entered the room I was asked to take charge of a class.In vain I demurred and refused.

“You surely can hear them read a chapter in the New Testament.”

It seemed inhuman as well as unchristian to refuse, for there were several classes without teachers, many good San Franciscans having gone into the country.There were the eager yellow faces watching for my reply.So I sat down in a pew with three Chinese young men on my right hand, two on my left, and four in the pew in front, all with English and Chinese Testaments in their hands.The lesson for the day was the fifteenth chapter of Matthew.They read slowly, but with greater accuracy of emphasis and pronunciation than I expected.Their patience and eagerness in trying to correct a mispronunciation were touching.At last came the end of the chapter.

“Now do you go on to the next chapter?”said I.

“No.Arx-play-in,” said the brightest of the boys.“You arx-play-in what we rade to you.”

I wished the floor of that Sunday-school chapel would open and swallow me up.To expound the fifteenth of Matthew at all; above all, to expound it in English which those poor souls could understand!In despair I glanced at the clock: it lacked thirty minutes of the end of school; at the other teachers: they were all glibly responding.Guiltily I said, “Very well.Begin and read the chapter over again, very slowly; and when you come to any word you do not understand, tell me, and I will try to explain it to you.”

Their countenances fell. This was not the way they had usually been taught. But with the meekness of a down-trodden people they obeyed. It worked even better than I had hoped. Poor souls! they probably did not understand enough to select the words which perplexed them. They trudged patiently through their verses again without question.But my Charybdis was near.The sixth verse came to the brightest boy.As he read, “Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition,” he paused after the word tradition.I trembled.

“Arx-play-in trardition,” he said.

“What?”said I, feebly, to gain a second’s more of time.“What word did you say?”

“Trardition,” he persisted.“What are trardition?Arx-play-in.”

What I said I do not know.Probably I should not tell if I did.But I am very sure that never in all my life have I found myself, and never in all the rest of my life shall I find myself, in so utterly desperate a dilemma as I was then, with those patient, earnest, oblique eyes fixed on me, and the gentle Chinese voice reiterating, “What are trardition?”

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MARIPOSA GROVE AND YOSEMITE VALLEY.

CHARLES LORING BRACE.

The great pleasure of the American continent will hereafter be the journey to the Yosemite. There is no one object of nature in the world, except Niagara, to equal it in attraction. Whenever the Pacific road brings the two coasts within a fortnight of each other, innumerable parties will be made up to visit it.I have been tolerably familiar, by foot-journeys, with Switzerland, Tyrol, and Norway, and I can truly say that no one scene in those grand regions can compare equally, in all its combinations, with the wonderful Cañon of the Yosemite.It is a matter of congratulation, also, to me, that I saw it before any road, or coach, or rail-car had approached it.It ought not to be visited otherwise than as our party journeyed to it,—on horses winding in picturesque train over velvety trails, beneath the gigantic pines of the Sierras....

Among all my many travelling experiences in various countries, I do not think I can ever forget the romance and the delicious beauty of that first night’s ride towards the Yosemite. The trail was barely wide enough for two to ride abreast, winding under majestic pines, over mountains, and down wide, deep dells, each step of the horses springing elastic from soft pine-leaves. The sun soon set, and a magnificent moon arose, giving us at one time a broad belt of light over the path, and then leaving us to descend into a mysterious gulf of darkness, and then casting strange shadows and half-lights through the pine-branches over our procession of riders. As we penetrated farther into the forest we began to wind about beneath trees such as few of us had ever seen,—the superb sugar-pine, perhaps the most perfect tree in nature, here starting with a diameter of from seven to twelve feet, and mounting up with most symmetrical branches to the height say of Trinity Church spire (two hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty feet); on the ends of its branches cones hanging a foot long. Sometimes we came forth from the forest for a few moments, and had grand glimpses of great mountain valleys, only partly revealed in the glorious moonlight. Most of the party were old travellers, and were rather impervious to sensations, but we all agreed that this was a new one, and gave a most promising augury of the Yosemite excursion.After fourteen miles—an easy ride—we all reached Clark’s Ranch at a late hour, ready for supper and bed.

[The next morning] we started at not too early an hour for a forest-ride to the Trees, Mr. Clark kindly guiding us. What may be called the avenue to these hoary monuments of antiquity lies through a gigantic forest of sugar-pines, themselves some two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high; so that when you reach the mighty towers of vegetation you lose a little the sense of their vast height. I searched curiously as we rode through the forest for the conditions which should produce such monsters of growth. It must be remembered that the Sequoia gigantea is not found merely here, or at Calaveras and its neighborhood. There appears to be a belt of them running along the slope of the Sierras, about four thousand and five thousand feet above the sea-level, and as far south as Visalia. They are so plentiful near that place as to be sawed for lumber, though what so light a wood could be used for I can hardly think. In the neighborhood of the latter place the Indians report a tree, far in the forest, surpassing in grandeur anything ever seen; but thus far no white man has ever cast eyes on it. It is a mistake, too, to suppose the race wearing out. I saw, both here and in Calaveras, young giant Sequoiæ, beginning patiently their thousand years of growth with all the vigor of their grand ancestors; some of but four hundred years, mere youths, were growing splendidly.There are fewer young trees here than in Calaveras, because fire or some other cause has swept among the underbrush of all trees, and must have destroyed many of these burly saplings.

The Sequoia grows on mountain-slopes, where the slow wash of water, through ages, brings down minute particles of fertilizing rocks, and the decayed vegetation of countless centuries, with the moisture of eternal springs, water and feed its roots.It enjoys a sun of the tropics without a cloud for six months, and has the balmy air of the Pacific, with incessant and gentle moisture, and a warm covering of snow for its winter.Beneath its roots, the ground never freezes.As has been well said, “It has nothing to do but grow;” and so with all the favorable conditions that nature can offer—air and sun and moisture—it pumps up its food from the everlasting hills, and builds up its slow, vegetable-like substance during century after century into a gigantic, symmetrical, and venerable pile, while nations begin and pass away beneath its shadow.

Think of lying under a tree beneath which the contemporary of Attila or Constantine might have rested, and which shall defy the storm, perhaps, when the present political divisions of the world are utterly passed away, and the names of Washington and Lincoln are among the heroes of a vague past.

But how to give an impression of its size!If my readers will imagine a Sequoia placed beside Trinity Church, he must conceive it filling up one of our largest dwelling-houses, say a diameter of thirty feet, with a circumference of ninety feet; the bark of this gigantic trunk will be light, porous, and reddish in color, with many scars upon it of fire (its great enemy); then, perhaps, at the height of the Trinity belfry (say one hundred feet), two opposing huge branches will protrude, it may be, themselves, of the size of large trees (say eight feet in diameter); these will be twisted and much broken; above them will come forth other heavy branches, which show the marks and blows of the storms of a thousand years or more, for the giant, so far above his fellows, meets a continual battering from the gales of the mountains.

There is no symmetry in his top, or delicacy and grace in his outline; he has battled and struggled with the storm for too many centuries to preserve an artistic appearance.He looks the giant of the forest, broad-rooted and strong-limbed, rough and weather-beaten, but defying snow and frost and hurricane for thousands of years, and still sheltering bird and beast and cattle beneath his grand shadow....

We visited one big tree in Calaveras which had been blown over two years before.The enormous weight which each tree carries makes it more difficult to bear the gales, as it overtops the forest.Perhaps any ordinary wood, such as oak or maple, would increase the specific gravity, so that at three hundred feet high the leverage on the roots would be too great to bear any strain of a gale; but this wood is almost like cork,—lighter than any wood on the Eastern coast.The fall of this mighty tower, they say, was heard for miles around, and made the earth tremble.Where it fell it has buried its top deep in the ground, so that there is quite a ravine made by the blow in the earth.You strike the trunk where it is still a large tree, and then walk upon it some two hundred feet towards the roots.When you reach the roots you are upon a height equal to the roof of a moderate-sized house, and a fall from the trunk would be dangerous.You descend by a ladder.

If I recollect rightly, there were three hundred and sixty-five trees in this Mariposa Grove. I measured one trunk, broken off at the top, where it was a foot in diameter, which was about two hundred and ninety feet in length, and estimating thirty feet as the length of the part broken off, it must have been some three hundred and twenty feet high. We lunched near a “camp” of the Geological Survey, in the heart of the grove, lying on our backs beneath the gigantic canopies, and feeling like pigmies at the feet of these giants. The younger trees were often wreathed with a strange, yellow, hanging moss. Our ladies were deeply interested in a remarkable flower which grew beneath the snow, a few patches of which still remained here in June. It was a blood-red flower of a fleshy-like substance, like the Pyrola, or “Dutchman’s pipe,” growing somewhat like a garden hyacinth. Its stems were clustered, from six to ten inches high, with long, erect scales, broader below and gradually narrower, and finally becoming bracts. The flowers were numerous, and occupied the upper half of the stem. It is the Sarcodes sanguinea

No aspect of nature I have ever looked upon, no sight of the desolate ocean, heaving and lashing in mighty surges beneath wintry storm, or sudden view of Alpine snow-peaks through rifts of black thunder-clouds, or glimpses of Norwegian coast-glaciers through the lulls of an Arctic gale, or even Niagara itself, was so full of the inspiration of awe as this first opening view of the Yosemite Cañon. All other scenes of grandeur and beauty must fade away in my memory when this vision is forgotten. Before the mighty powers which had shaped this tremendous gorge, and in presence of this scene of unspeakable and indescribable beauty and majesty, man and his works seemed to sink away to nothingness.... I almost felt as if I had known nothing of the cañon before, so surprising were the effects of coloring and shadow. It must be remembered we had struck the gorge on one of its lateral walls, say about four miles from its western end. There is no approach to it from below up the stream. As we lay on the edge of the cliff we gazed up a narrow green valley perfectly flat, from a mile to half a mile wide, and winding, some six miles above, between enormous cliffs and precipices, a small, bright, sparkling stream in the middle, fringed with green grass or forest-trees.The wall, over the edge of which we were looking, was nearly three-quarters of a mile high, and far below, the oaks and willows and poplars and pines in the green intervale looked like little shrubs.On the other side, a short distance beyond, was the grand bluff of El Capitan, a sheer precipice of nearly four thousand feet, its light granite pile, in the evening light, the most majestic cliff that human eye has looked upon, beyond were other bluffs and precipices, pearly gray and purplish-white, with green fringes below, and dark archways or fantastic figures traced by shadows on their surface.There were buttresses, as of gigantic cathedrals, and archways such as might support hills of granite, and domes where a mountain was the substructure, and half domes, and peaks whose regular succession has given them the name of “Brothers,”—all varying in color and shadow, incessantly, with the receding light; some with the delicious cool gray of the rock color, some white, with a reddish shade; others faint purple; others resplendent in pink and brilliant purple; while over their edges, giving a joyous life to the scene, rushed sparkling silver streams, in innumerable waterfalls, dashing into the green valley below....But the scene was changing.Over the valley, the heavy shadow of El Capitan continually increased its gigantic breadth of shade; beyond him the “Arches,” which, to be seen at that distance, must be a thousand feet in height, grew each instant more strongly marked, but still farther beyond to the east the North Dome and the Half Dome were golden and purple in the evening light, and yet beyond the still white peaks of the Sierras towered above in the pale blue.

On our side of the vast gorge the foot of the various precipices and cliffs was covered with detritus, making, near the bottom, a considerable slope, on which grew many evergreen trees.

On the other side there was one line of massive rock, which fell apparently plumb, without a break or curve, for nearly four thousand feet, and at its base, so hard was the material, there seemed no recent detritus at all.One could evidently touch the very bottom of the immense fall of rock....

The form of the cañon is unique, nothing in Europe resembling it: the immense vertical walls rising so abruptly from the green vale; the peaks, too, which surround it, being original, even in the Sierras; the immense, inaccessible, concentric masses of granite,—domes, or half-domes, as if melted in some gigantic mould, and then, when cooled, left standing in the air.

One of the grandest and most beautiful objects in the valley was directly opposite our hotel, and its music never ceased, day or night,—the Yosemite Fall. The stream which bears this name heads about ten miles away, and then flows down, almost directly over the mighty precipice, into the valley below,—a depth of two thousand five hundred and fifty feet. At this time it is about thirty-five feet wide by two or three deep. The fall has almost the appearance of one grand shoot of water, but it has, in reality, three divisions: the first is a descent of fifteen hundred feet on a ledge (as it seems), though it is, in fact, a shelf of rock, a third of a mile broad; then follow a series of cascades for six hundred and twenty-five feet, and a final leap of four hundred. There is water enough now to give a bright, foaming, grand sweep of the whole cataract. It is certainly one of the most beautiful objects the human eye can ever gaze upon! We never wearied of riding out over the green meadows and gay, wild flowers to get some new aspect of it.

The only fall to compare it with, that I have ever seen, is the Vöring Foss, in Norway.This is a fall of nine hundred and fifty feet, but the water is so scanty that it is all resolved into wreaths of mist before it reaches the bottom; and it makes but little impression on the mind, compared with the Yosemite Fall.It is, moreover, confined in a narrow, dark gorge, and must be seen usually from above.In seeing the Californian fall, I did not even think of the Norwegian.

The amount of water, at this season, adds immensely to the cheerfulness and life of the valley; but it also occasioned us a great deal of trouble in getting round.We were mired several times, and twice one of our ladies was thrown on the soft greensward.

But the scampering gallops through the groves under these grand scenes, and the quiet amblings amid such beauty and sublimity, were pleasures which nothing marred.In our rides down the cañon, we were struck by the grand mass of the Sentinel Dome, four thousand one hundred and fifty feet above the valley, and said to give the finest point of view in the whole region round; the valley itself, it must be remembered, being over four thousand feet above the sea-level.Then three-quarters of a mile beyond is the majestic buttress of the Sentinel Rock, three thousand feet high, of which a thousand feet is a smooth obelisk; opposite to this are the Three Brothers, the highest three thousand eight hundred and thirty feet, and each regularly lower than the next.

Then comes the Cathedral Rock, two thousand six hundred and sixty feet, with two perfect spires, the most picturesque object in the valley; then the exquisite Pohono, or Bridal Veil, a flashing fall of a thousand feet swaying like a silvery plume in the mountain breezes, and the grand feature of the gorge, of which I have so often spoken, El Capitan, three thousand six hundred feet.

To the east of the hotel, about two miles above the falls, the valley ends and divides into three cañons, each containing scenery as remarkable as those of the main gorge.The northwest cañon is the Tinaya Fork; here we have the Half Dome, a majestic inaccessible crest of concentric granite, four thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven feet above the valley, with a vertical face where the half sphere split off of two thousand feet in height; the North Dome, a rounded mass, three thousand five hundred and sixty-eight feet, and easy to ascend from the north.In this fork is the exquisite Tisayic Lake, on which the morning reflections are so beautifully given.

The middle cañon, that of the Merced River, is the most important one of the three. No ravine scenery in Europe equals this wild and extraordinary gorge. The river, which at this season has a tremendous body of water, descends through a wild ravine of two miles, nineteen hundred and eighty feet. The path winds along over a series of wild falls and rapids, till a cloud and gale of mist and wet cover it, through which we reach a dry place at the foot of a magnificent fall, four hundred and seventy-five feet high,—the Vernal. Then ladders are ascended up the face of the cliff, and we rest on the dry, sunny ledge over the boiling and whirling cataract. Still another scramble for a mile, and we find ourselves blinded, gasping, in the breath of the furious cataract above. We are all clad in India-rubber coats (furnished by a guide), and drip with water, and work up, inch by inch, stooping, as against a violent current. The gale takes away our breaths, and we have every now and then to catch a breath; there is nothing visible ahead but clouds of mist and driving swirls of rain, with a roar filling the air, which prevents all voices from being heard.We are helping the ladies on with the utmost difficulty, but at last all reluctantly give out and turn back; but I cannot bear to give up the view; and after groping in the furious storm and mist, I at length find a side path through the chaparral, and soon reach a dry ledge beneath the superb Nevada Fall,—a majestic sweep of thundering water, six hundred and thirty-nine feet in height, more grand than any waterfall in the valley, because of the volume of water.There is a peculiar twist in the upper portion of it, which adds to its picturesque effect.On the other side rises a most remarkable peak of granite, solitary and inaccessible,—Mount Broderick, some two thousand feet.The scene as I stood there alone beneath this sublime sweep of waters, and amid those mighty mountain-cliffs, can never be forgotten.

The South Fork I did not visit, but the photographs show that it possesses scenery as romantic as the other branches of the cañon.It is interesting to notice that these enormous waterfalls in the Merced Cañon have scarcely an indentation on this most hard rock,—a fact probably indicating that they have not existed a great length of time.The comparative absence of detritus in the upper part of the main valley would seem to show the action of water and ice, pressing the débris into the lower portion, where more of it is found.There are, too (as was discovered by Mr. King), something which may be called lateral moraines, and perhaps a terminal moraine in the middle of the cañon, so that it seems not improbable, though there is no absolute evidence, that in a comparatively recent period glaciers existed in the upper part, and a lake in the body of the Yosemite Cañon, the descent of the whole valley, it must be remembered, being only fifty feet during some eight miles.

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A SPORTSMAN’S EXPERIENCE IN MEXICO.

SIR ROSE LAMBERT PRICE.

The day after our arrival, H—— and myself, getting mules and a guide, started for Pira de la Questa, a small Indian village about twelve miles from Acupulco, and situated near the extremity of a large lagoon, some thirty miles in circumference, which we were informed was full of wild fowl.Over many a rough road and in many lands have I ridden, but never did I travel a highway like unto this.The path ran over the mountains through a thick forest, and more resembled the bed of a water-course than an actually connected route.Nothing but mules, whose cat-like propensities enable them to overcome apparently insurmountable difficulties, could possibly have done the journey.In places the path was so narrow that two of these animals were unable to pass abreast, so that one would be obliged to go back into a convenient corner, or scramble up a bank, to permit the other to go by.

The forest was dense, but, as it was just prior to the rains, almost leafless, everything being burned and parched up except in the valleys and bottoms of ravines, where running water rendered the vegetation luxuriant and flourishing. This absence of foliage, though detracting considerably from the beauty of the forest, permitted us to view all the better its feathered denizens, and in few tropical countries have I seen such lovely birds, or in such numbers as out here.To classify or name them would require a man to be a perambulating encyclopædia of natural history; but among them all I was most struck with the number of specimens of the woodpecker class, several of which were very beautiful.One in particular with a blood-red topknot, which glittered vividly in the sun, I envied much for my fishing-book, and regretted the guide had my gun in his possession nearly a mile behind.

As the sun was setting we entered the village, which consisted of a few mud huts with sideless roofs, and halting before one of them, was informed by the guide that it was to be our quarters for the night.It was simply a roof of palm-leaves over a mud floor, there being no kind of wall or even screen, and it formed the universal dormitory of men, women, and children, pigs and poultry, at the principal hotel—the Claridge’s, in fact—of Pira la Questa.Leaving the proprietress and her numerous progeny engaged in hunting down an active-looking fowl for our evening repast, we rode to the lagoon, and giving the guide our mules to hold, shot a few of the curious-looking aquatic birds, which he pronounced to be “buéno,” or good for eating, that were feeding round the banks.It was rapidly getting dark, and seeing at a distance some birds that I took to be duck, I noiselessly crept down on them.To do so I had to pass over a small spot of white sand, concealed, until I was on it, by a clump of bushes.

While still silently watching the birds I saw something move a little to my right, and on turning round discovered a huge alligator, whom I had almost cut off from the lake. The bushes had hidden us until absolutely face to face, and he came by me with his teeth grinning and tail half cocked, in the most unamiable frame of mind I ever saw in one of his tribe.Without intending it, I had very nearly cut him off from his native element; and though naturally a cowardly brute, feeling himself to a certain degree cornered, he had evidently made up his mind to fight.Not being prepared, with only small shot in my gun, for a duel with the reptile, I stopped short and gave him right of way, and, as he cleared me at about two yards, let him have both barrels behind the shoulder to expedite his movements, and had the satisfaction of seeing him give a jump into the water that would have done credit to a performer for the Grand National.

They are cowardly brutes, and though I have been frequently in parts of the world they inhabit, I have never yet heard of an instance of a man being attacked by one on land.In the water it is different.A boy had, while bathing, been taken down some months since close to this very spot; and from what I saw of the lagoon next morning, I would not have ventured a swim there for untold gold.Had I been a little quicker, and unintentionally barred this fellow’s way to the lake, I am quite certain he would have attacked me, as he must have passed somehow.These creatures never take to the jungle, and, like a rat driven into a corner, he would have been obliged to fight.

On returning to the village we found our dinner nearly ready; bread and liquor we had brought with us, but the hunted fowl, new-laid eggs, and hot tortillas formed no bad meal for travellers sharp set by a mountain ride. After feeding, we visited some of the principal houses in the village, chaffed some of the good-humored and pretty little Indian girls, and arranged about a canoe for the following morning. We then slung our grass hammocks among the miscellaneous company and wooed the drowsy god of slumber, our guide slinging his hammock up between us, and sleeping with his machete buckled around him, ready for attack or defence at a moment’s notice.

The machete is the invariable companion of the poorer and middle classes of Mexicans, and the multiplicity of uses to which it is dedicated are something wonderful to the uninitiated.With it he clears the tangled paths in the forest; it helps to build his hut, to cut his firewood, and eat his dinner; he uses it for purposes of warfare, and too frequently also for purposes of assassination.The blade is broad, slightly curved, a little shorter than an infantry officer’s regulation sword, and about twice as heavy.The handle is generally made of wood, the scabbard leather, and the edge invariably as keen as a razor.Occasionally the blades are ornamented with gold or silver, but the ordinary machete is perfectly plain.

Next morning we were up before daylight, and hastened to the banks of the lagoon, where according to agreement we should have found our canoe.None was forthcoming, however, and not until the sun broke fiercely on our heads and our patience was completely exhausted did our guide prevail on the man who was to have provided it to go in search of another.After a still further considerable delay, at last he arrived, but with a rickety conveyance that would only hold one gun besides the paddler; and H——taking the canoe, I walked along the edge, and our shooting commenced.

The place was full of all kinds of odd-looking waterfowl. Geese, duck, teal, pelicans, flamingo, and spoonbills were in hundreds, and many kinds of waders unknown to me; in fact, such an extraordinary variety of fresh-water birds I had never seen together before. The ducks were particularly handsome, having bright bronze breasts, which shone like burnished metal in the sun. Of teal I shot several varieties, many of them with exceedingly beautiful and brilliant plumage; but I think among the queer ones I killed there were none more beautiful in plumage than the spoonbill; for though his singular and uncouth beak did not improve his countenance, he had the most lovely and delicate tinge of rose-color through his white feathers it is possible to conceive.We had him for dinner two days afterwards, and found him excellent.

Not knowing a quarter of the birds that got up, and many being fishy and unfit for food, whenever one rose the guide would cry either “Buéno” or “No buéno,” as it happened to be fit or unfit for culinary purposes; and so on for nine miles along the banks, sometimes through mud, at others through sand, and at others through jungle or water, did I plod along, taking whatever was termed “buéno,” and occasionally peppering an obtrusive alligator when he came anything inside twelve yards.

The heat was intense, and, to add to the discomfort of walking, the paths through the jungle and mangrove swamps occasionally bordered the edges of the lake, and were so thickly crossed by cobwebs that they were perpetually knocking off my hat, getting in my mouth and eyes, and at times almost impeded my progress.I never saw anything like them.Occasionally large forest-trees were entirely covered from top to bottom, and so thickly shrouded that not a leaf or twig could be seen through its unnatural-looking winding-sheet.The lagoon seemed full of fish, which were jumping in shoals all over it; but not once during the day did we see a single bird settle on its surface; and from the number of alligators swimming about, I think they showed their wisdom.

It was capital sport, but precious hard work also, and I was just about “played out,” when we reached a “ranche,” where, after a pull of cold water that must have somewhat alarmed my constitution, I tumbled into a grass hammock, uncommonly glad to get out of the burning sun.

A pleasant-featured young Mexican woman, with a dark-eyed, good-looking sister, soon despatched between them one of the many chickens running about the house; and while the cazuela was preparing they very good-naturedly washed out my shirt, lending me, ad interim, some embroidered garment of their own. The rest of my clothes were hung up to dry, every stitch on me being thoroughly saturated. H—— and the canoe soon after arrived, and how we did enjoy the homely but excellent fare our hostess put before us! Then came pipes and a siesta, and a couple of hours’ rest saw us fit to return. H—— had got enough of it, and, borrowing a horse, rode back to the village. I returned in the canoe, and got a good many shots en routeOur bag was a mixed one, and consisted of the birds I have already mentioned, with several others whose names we did not know, and four rabbits.Wild duck and teal predominated, and the guides could hardly stagger from the canoe to the houses with our united bag.

The sun was fast setting as we left Pira la Questa on our return journey, and ere we reached the mountain-top it was quite dark. Unable to see a yard before us, but knowing we must go on, I threw the reins on my mule’s neck, and, lighting a pipe, resigned myself implicitly to his sagacity, not only to find the path, but to avoid the obstacles which at every step lay before him. My confidence was not misplaced. With nose almost touching the ground, he seemed to smell his way along, and not once during our long ride did he deviate for a second from the proper track, or make a single false step or stumble. The sounds and strange cries during the dark stillness of the night were very remarkable. Whether caused by bird or insect I could not tell; but one in particular, resembling the prolonged whistle of a locomotive steam-engine, was frequently of more than a minute’s duration without ceasing, and of such volume and intensity that unless I had been aware of the utter impossibility of a train being within hundreds of miles, I would have almost sworn to so familiar a sound.The lights of Acupulco at last came in sight, and our animals soon after deposited us safely, after a somewhat trying but very agreeable trip....

On the 10th of May we left Acupulco and steamed quietly along the Mexican coast in sight of land until we reached Manzanillo Bay, on the southeast part of which are situated the few wretched huts that constitute the village.The harbor is well protected from southerly winds, but not from those directly from the westward.Behind the village, and only a few hundred yards from the sea-beach, is a large shallow lagoon which runs nearly forty miles into the interior, and at the end of the dry season becomes almost empty.The exhalations at this time rising from the mud and stagnant water are most dreadful, and even at our anchorage the stench during the night was almost unbearable....

Next morning, before daylight, we started with Mr. D—— across the lagoon to a place about an hour’s row from the village, where he said he was in the habit of getting wild duck.The lake was so shallow that our boat often grounded, and the oars at each stroke disturbed the black, ink-like mud that constituted the bottom.The sides were beautifully wooded, and surrounded by ranges of hills extending far into the interior, the edges of the water being fringed with a belt of mangrove-trees, whose peculiarly bright green foliage contrasted pleasingly with the sombre coloring of the leafless trees behind them.The perfectly stagnant water was of a light-yellow tint, and as full of alligators as it could well be....

After firing a good many shots, and gathering a somewhat miscellaneous bag, Mr. D—— saw a large alligator asleep on some mud, lying half in and half out of the water; and as I was the only one of the party who had brought any bullets, he sent one of the guides to show me where it lay, in hope that I might get a shot.

Slowly, and with the greatest caution, I waded through water until I got within twelve yards of where the brute lay, and aiming about an inch behind the eye, drove a bullet clean into his brain.He gave a convulsive kind of shudder and lash with his tail, and was, I believe, dead; but to make certain I gave him the second barrel at about four yards’ distance behind the shoulder, and then felt quite confident that I had indeed “wound him up.”

It was some time before we could induce the natives to assist in pulling him on dry land. Though they do not mind them living and swimming about, they are particularly careful of a wounded one, a single sweep of its powerful tail, even when mortally stricken, being known to break both legs of a man like a pipe-stem. Though dead enough to all intents and purposes, an alligator, like either a shark or a turtle, will continue possessed of a certain amount of vitality and motion for a long period after life is really extinct. This fellow was still gently swaying his tail about while we bent on a rope to it, and, all five of us clapping on, soon hauled him to the dry mud on the bank, where we took his length, opened his jaws, and generally examined the formidable-looking reptile at our leisure. He was about fifteen feet long and inconceivably hideous. The first bullet had smashed a large hole exactly where I aimed,—namely, about one inch behind the eye; the skull seemed comparatively thin there, was unprotected by any thick skin, and a large lump of his brain was oozing through the wound. The second bullet went through his heart; but I am convinced that it was unnecessary, as the first shot had done all that was needful.

Much as people have written to the contrary, I am quite satisfied now that an alligator is as easily slain as a rabbit, if only hit in the right place; and that place is not in the eye, as is generally stated, but on the same level, and from an inch to an inch and a half behind it.The brain in all reptiles lies rather far back in the head, joining almost to the neck.By striking one in the eye from many positions it is quite possible that the brain may not be touched at all; while, if the ball hits the slightest degree in front of it, on the creature’s long ugly snout, the bullet might as well be chucked in the river for all the harm it will do the alligator.Unsightly as these gentry are, the Indians occasionally eat them.The skins are sometimes tanned; but they smell so strong, it is an awkward job to handle them.During dry seasons they collect in vast quantities in the small pools still left unevaporated, and are then killed in large numbers for their hides, which when tanned are found serviceable for many purposes.They are tougher than ordinary leather, and resist water better.Only the belly pieces are used.

Some few years ago during a very heavy rain, a number of alligators got taken out of the lake by a small river running into the sea, which was greatly flooded.They were immediately attacked by the sharks, and a strange battle ensued between these equally voracious monsters, which all the people of the village flocked out to witness.The battle lasted all day, and the noise of the combat could be heard half a mile off.John Shark was, however, more at home in his native element than his scaly antagonist, and eventually the alligators were all eaten up or killed.

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THE SCENERY OF THE MEXICAN LOWLANDS.

FELIX L.OSWALD.

We had a glimpse of the sun before we finished our short breakfast, and when we plunged into the maze of the forest the occasional vistas through the leafy vault revealed larger and larger patches of bright blue sky.Our so-called road, however, was worse than anything I had ever seen or heard of Flemish or South Louisiana synonymes of that word,—miry lagoons and spongy mud as black and as sticky as pitch.I followed at the heels of my carrier, who preferred the lagoons and seemed to find the shallow places by a sort of instinct, and the Switzer managed to propel his heavy boots through the toughest quagmire; but his boy, after losing his shoes five or six times, slung them across his shoulder and splashed on barefoot.We kept through a comparatively open forest of cottonwood- and tulip-trees, with a dense jungle on our right-hand side, while on our left the land sloped towards the bottom of the Rio Verde, which is here about five hundred paces wide, and during the rainy season fills its muddy banks to the brink.These lower coast forests abound in gigantic trees, whose fruits are only accessible to the winged and four-handed denizens of the forest, but farther up the river-shores are lined for miles with a dense growth of wild-growing plantains, of which the natives distinguish four varieties under as many different names. The fruit of the largest, the cuernavacas (“cow-horns”), attains a weight of seven pounds, and resembles in shape the crooked pod of the tamarind rather than the cucumber-shaped little bananas which reach our Northern markets. They ripen very slowly, and often rot on the tree before they become eatable, but the Mexicans cure them over a slow fire of embers and green brushwood, after which their taste can hardly be distinguished from that of the finest yellow bananas. Palm-trees mingle here with the massive stems of the cottonwoods, talipot-palms, and the Palma prieta, whose nut might become a profitable article of export, having a close resemblance to a filbert.The plum-clusters of the mango can only be reached by a bold climber, as the trunk rises like a mast, often perfectly free from branches for eighty or ninety feet, and the chief beneficiaries of this region are still the macaws and squirrel-monkeys; but farther up Pomona becomes more condescending, and the ancient Gymnosophists, whose religion restricted true believers to a diet of wild-growing tree-fruits, would have found their fittest home in the terrace-land between the lower twenty miles of the Rio Verde and the foot-hills of the Sierra de San Miguel.

Plum-bearing bushes abound from June to September with red, yellow, and wax-colored fruit; the morus, or wild mulberry-tree, literally covers the ground with its dark, honey-sweet berries; the crown of the pino-palm is loaded with grape-like clusters, which, struck by a cudgel, discharge a shower of rich acorn-shaped nuts; guavas, alligator-pears, mamayos, chirimoyas, and wild oranges display flowers and fruit at the same time, and under the alternate influence of heat and moisture produce their perennial crops with unfailing regularity; the algarobe (Mimosa siliqua), a species of mezquite not larger than an apple-tree, yields half a ton of the edible pods known as carob-beans or St. John’s bread; the figs of the gigantic banyan-tree furnish an aromatic syrup; the trunks of the Robinia viridis exude an edible gum; and from the vine-tangle forming the vault of the forest hang the bunches and clusters of forty or fifty varieties of wild grapes, many of them superior to our scuppernongs and catawbas, while the amber-colored Uva real rivals the flavor of the finest Damascene raisin-grapes. A forced march of ten hours through fens and silent virgin woods brought us at last to the hummock region; the plain swelled into mounds, and the currents of the sluggish bayous became more perceptible. The higher levels showed vestiges of cultivation; we crossed dykes and ditches, a neglected fence here and there, and where the larger trees had been felled grapes and liana figs covered even the bushes and hedges in incredible profusion. A troop of capuchin monkeys leaped from a low mango-tree, and two stumbling youngsters who brought up the rear in the scramble for the high timber would have tempted us to a chase if we had not been anxious to reach less malarious quarters before night. The neighborhood of the great swamps still betrayed itself by that peculiar miasmatic odor which emanates from stagnant pools and decaying vegetable matter, and in the recesses of the forest fluttered the slate-colored swamp-moth, the ominous harbinger of the mosquito. The tipulary pests were getting ready for action; their skirmishers, the sancudos and Moscas negras, had already opened the campaign, and became sensible as well as audible in spite of the rapidity of our march. One of the twilight species, the Mosca delgada, a straw-colored little midge, bites like a fire-ant,—a mischievous and, it seems, unpractical freak of nature, since the superfluous virulence of its sting must certainly interfere with the business facilities of a suctorial insect.

The cotton-gin loomed at the farther end of the field, and was taken by storm over piles of muck and scattered fence-rails.Seeing no ladder, we clambered through the pivot-hole in the ceiling of a musty-smelling machine-shed, but in the open loft above we found a delicious breeze, and—St.Hubert be praised!—not a single mosquito.

The carrier threw himself upon his pack with a sigh of relief, and we squatted around the hatch to cool off before we opened our mess-bag.

From the hills on our right came the perfume of blooming tamarisks, and from the jungle below a cool lake-air; and at times strange voices of the wilderness,—the hoarse bark of a cayman, answered by the shriek of swamp-geese in the canebrakes of the Rio Verde, and in the distance now and then a queer rustling sound, like the shaking of a tree butted by some heavy animal.Bats were circling above our heads in the moonlight, and our advent seemed to have excited the curiosity of a troop of flying-squirrels, who uttered their chirping squeak now on the roof, now in the branches of a neighboring live-oak-tree.

After removing a layer of seed-cotton that might harbor scorpions or centipedes, I spread my blanket near the hatch and made myself comfortable for the night. My feet still smarted, though I had pulled off my stockings as well as my boots; yet I could not regret the hardships of a march which had brought us to such an encampment. The portador was taking his ease in the centre of the floor, where the night-wind played with his long hair, while the Swiss boy had fallen asleep on the mantle of his countryman, who was sitting in the open louvre, smoking his pipe in measureless content.The air up here was delightfully cool, and, with the buzz of the legions of Beelzebub still ringing in our ears, the sense of security itself was more than a negative comfort.

Baron Savarin, who wrote a treatise on the art of enjoying life, should have added a chapter on the happiness of contrast.A snug little cottage in a stormy November night, a shade-tree on the Llano Estacado, the silence of the Upper Alleghanies after a “revival-meeting” in the valleys, a bath in the dog-days, would rank above all the luxuries of Paris and Stamboul, if unbought enjoyments could ever become fashionable.

The moon set soon after midnight, but we managed to readjust our luggage by the light of greased paper spills, and entered the gates of the foot-hills before the watch-call of the night-hawk had been silenced by the reveille of the iris-crows.A keen land-breeze, tumbling the mists through the fens of the Tierra Caliente, gave promise of a bright day.What wonderful perfumes the morning wind brews from the atmosphere of a moist tropical forest-land!—scents that haunt the memory more persistently than the echo of a weird song.No latter-day nose could analyze these odors and trace them to their several sources; but with or without an attempt at further classification, they might be primarily divided into sweet and pungent aromatic smells, the latter prevailing in the coast jungles, the former in the mountain forests.A few of the first named—the spicy scents—are so peculiar that, once identified, they can be easily recognized: here, for instance, the effluvium of the musk lianas, whose flowers diffuse a sort of odorous diapason which predominates, even through the bouquet-medley of the South Mexican flora.

As the white streaks in the east assumed a yellowish tint, the paroquets in the crests of the pino-palms saluted the morning with sudden screams; the multitudinous voices of a crow-swarm approached from the coast forests; two and two, and in a series of pairs, the macaws came flying across the sky; and in our near neighborhood the startling cry of the chachalaca or jungle-pheasant went up from an hibiscus thicket. Softly first, then louder and louder, the calanda, the mocking-bird of the tropics, intonated its morning hymn, and the fluting curlew rose from the grass like a skylark; but a sweeter sound to our ears was the murmuring of a little brook at the roadside.We had reached the region of rocks and swift-flowing waters.

Of reptiles, as of Red Republicans, it may be said that they are least dreaded in the countries where they most abound. While a New England boarding-school virgin goes into epileptic spasms at the aspect of a blindworm, the young Mexicanas surround themselves with a variety of ophidian pets, and view a freckled tree-snake and a gay butterfly with equal pleasure or equal unconcern. A little barefoot girl that met us on her way to the spring put her toes caressingly on the smooth hide of a green-and-white speckled Vivora mansa that wriggled across the road; and our barelegged portador kicked dozens of good-sized bush-snakes out of our path after noticing that they frightened our young travelling companion. More than ninety per cent of all South American snakes are as harmless as lizards, and the four or five venomous varieties are well known and easily avoided.

I will here add a word on the dreaded venomous insects of the tropics. The ant and mosquito plagues of the coast jungles can hardly be over-estimated, but the virulence of their larger congeners is frequently and grossly exaggerated. The chief insect-ogres of sensation romancers and fireside travellers are three: the scorpion, the tarantula, and the centipede, either of whom can rival the homicidal prestige of Victor Hugo’s octopus.But I may confidently appeal to the verdict of any personal observer who has passed a few years in the African or American tropics when I assert that these supposed express-messengers of Death are not more venomous and are far less aggressive than our common North American hornet.I doubt if the sting of twenty tarantulas could cause the death of a healthy child, and I am quite sure that a poison-ivy blister and the bite of a fire-ant are more painful than the sting of a centipede.An hysterical lady may succumb to the bite of a common gadfly, but I hold that only co-operative insects—termites, wasps, bumble-bees, etc.—could ever make away with a normally constituted human being.

A swarm of vociferous iris-crows appeared in the sky overhead, and before they had passed, the woods were wide awake all around.The humming-birds were on the wing, the wood-pigeons repeated their murmuring call in the taxus-groves, and from the lower depths of the forest came the chattering scream of a squirrel-monkey.The rising sun was hidden by the tree-tops of the eastern valleys when we halted on the summit of a rocky bluff, but the mountain mists had disappeared, and the vistas on our left afforded a dazzling view of the sunlit foot-hills and the valley of the Rio Verde.The river is here crossed by a rope-ferry a little above its junction with a tributary that drains the glorious valley of Morillo and an Alpine group whose wooded heights stand in my memory like a vision of a Ganadesha, the mountain park of Indra’s Paradise.

The air of these woodlands is the antithesis of our Northern workshop atmosphere. There is a feeling of delight—our lost sixth sense, I am tempted to call it—which gratifies the lungs rather than the olfactory organ if you inhale the morning breezes, oxidated, and perhaps ozonized, by the first influence of sunlight on the aromatic vegetation of these hills,—a delight which, like the charm of harmonious sounds, reacts on the soul, and awakens emotions which have lain dormant in the human breast since we exchanged the air of our Summer-land home for the dust of our hyperborean tenement-prisons.

The hum of insects soon mingled with the bird-voices of our forest. To and fro, in fitful flight, flashed the libellas, the glitter-winged dragon-flies, and a few large papilios flopped lazily through the dew-drenched foliage.No gnats up here, but thousands of tiny, honey-seeking wasps and midges, and bright-winged grasshoppers that rose with a fluttering spring when the first sunbeams reached the damp underbrush.Ants hurried about their daily toil, and when we ascended the next ridge we saw various kinds of lizards flitting across the road or basking on the wayside rocks, one of them a sort of dwarf iguana of a moss-green tint, on which protective color it seemed to rely for its safety, as its movements were as sluggish as those of a toad.

As we kept steadily up-hill, the sun seemed to mount very rapidly, and, peak after peak, the summits of the upper Sierra rose into view. Zempantepec, La Sirena, and the Nevada de Colcoyan towered above the rest, the latter at least four thousand feet above the snow-line. Few prospects on earth could efface the impression of that panorama. In the Sierra de San Miguel our continent reproduces the Syrian Lebanon on a grander scale. Septimius Severus, who vacillated between his throne and the Elysian valleys of Daphne, would have renounced the empire of the world for the mountain-gardens of the Val de Morillo, and the giants of the cypress forests on the southeastern slope of the Sierra dwarf all the cedars of Bashan and Hebron. The largest, though not the tallest, of these trees, the cypress of Maria del Tule (twelve miles south of San Miguel), which Humboldt calls the “oldest vegetable monument of our globe,” has a diameter of forty-two feet, a circumference of one hundred and thirty-six feet near the ground and of one hundred and four feet higher up, and measures two hundred and eighty-two feet between the extremities of two opposite branches.Yet this tree has many rivals in the Val de Morillo and near the sources of the Rio Verde, where groups of grayish-green mountain-firs rise like hillocks above the surrounding vegetation.

On our right extended the orange-gardens of Casa Blanca for two miles along the base of the hill to a deep ravine, reappearing on the other side, where their white-blooming tree-tops mingled with the copses of a banana-plantation. Farther up, euphorbias and hibiscus prevailed, and the upper limit of the foot-hills is marked by the paler green of the cork-oak forests that cover the slopes of the sierra proper. In the northeast this sierra becomes linked with the ramifications of the central Cordilleras, and connected with our ridge by one of the densely-wooded spurs that flank the plateau of the Llanos Ventosos. The rocks at our feet belonged, therefore, to a mountain-chain that might be called a lineal continuation of the Gila range in Arizona and Nueva Leon. But what a difference in the climate and scenery! There arid rocks and thorny ravines; here dense mountain forests, deep rivers, a saturated atmosphere, and springs on almost every acre of ground. The very brambles in the rock-clefts were fresh with dew, and the sprouts of the broom-furze looked like wildering asparagus. The ravines flamed with flowers of every size and every hue. An agent of a London or Hamburg curiosity-dealer might make his living here with a common butterfly-net. On any sunny forenoon an active boy could gather a stock of Lepidoptera that would create a bonanza sensation among the collectors of a North European capital.The rhododendron thickets of the upper Rio Verde are frequented by gigantic varieties of nymphalis, vanessa, and parnassius, which would retail in Brussels at from two to ten dollars apiece.

The sun rose higher, but not the thermometer, and when we clambered up through an orchard of scattered cherry-trees I am sure that the maximum temperature in the shade did not exceed sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit.We had reached the Llanos Ventosos, the air-plains of San Miguel, the playground of the four winds of heaven, where sun-strokes are unknown, though the mists of the rainy season never cloud their deep-blue sky.Down in the coast jungles the Rain-fiend was at it again: dark-gray showers swept visibly along the shore, while the foot-hills simmered under the rays of a vertical sun.But up here the air was dry as well as cool; the edge of the plateau is at least six thousand feet above the level of the Pacific, which is in plain view from Punta Piedra to the downs of Tehuantepec.

We entered the village about two p.m., and my companions conducted me to a little frame house, where I was hospitably received by the Indian gardener and the daughters of Pastor Wenck, the minister of the Protestant part of the community, whose brother in Tehuantepec had intrusted me with different letters, with a note of introduction.The pastor had harnessed his mule an hour ago to get a load of Spanish moss from the foot-hills, so I left my carrier in charge of the Indian gardener and sauntered out into the village.

Neubern (New Bern) de San Miguel—or Villa Cresciente, as it was originally called, from its situation on a crescent-shaped bluff—was founded in 1865 under the happiest auspices, the charter of the colony including such inducements as exemption from taxes for the first five years, free roads and schools, gratuitous seed-corn, farming implements, etc., to indigent immigrants, and attracted a considerable number of the very best agriculturists from Tyrol and Southern Switzerland.But after the collapse of the imperial government a waning moon would have been the fitter emblem of the Crescent Village: its privileges were abrogated, and many of the disappointed Bauern returned to their native countries.Still, the appointment of a few half-Indian officials is the only positive grievance of the colonists, and the advantages of their climate and situation might well reconcile them to greater inconveniences.

At a distance of only sixteen degrees from the equator, the average temperatures of the coldest and warmest months differ less than spring and summer in the United States, so that the September weather of Geneva or Innspruck is here as perennial as a sea-fog in Newfoundland. During a residence of seven years, Pastor Wenck has chronicled four thunder-storms, twenty-two common storms, two hoar-frosts (both in November), one sultry day, and two hundred and eight short showers, leaving a balance of two thousand two hundred and ninety-two days of himmelswetter,—heaven weather,—as he called it, alternating with cool nights whose dew indemnifies the fields for the scantiness of the annual rainfall.Yet the denizens of this Himmel-land come in for a first-hand share of all the luxuries which a compensating nature has lavished on the inhabitants of the sweltering Tierra Caliente.

Forty or fifty varieties of tropical fruits come to their tables in a freshness and sun-ripened sweetness quite unknown to our Northern markets; their builders may select their material from groves of mahogany, iron-wood, American ebony, green-heart, euphorbia, and other timber-trees of the coast swamps; cacao, vanilla, gums, and frankincense can be bought at half trade prices, and an excursion of ten miles will take them to a region where the pot-hunter can fill his bag day after day without fear of ever exhausting the meat-supply, where the adventurous sportsman may try his luck and the mettle of his dogs, and where the naturalist can revel in all the wonders of a tropical terra incognita.

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AMONG THE RUINS OF YUCATAN.

JOHN L.STEPHENS.

In the mean time it began to rain; and, settling my accounts with the señora, thanking her for her kindness, leaving an order to have some bread baked for the next day, and taking with me an umbrella and a blue bag, contents unknown, belonging to Mr. Catherwood, which he had particularly requested me to bring, I set out on my return. Augustin followed, with a tin teapot and some other articles for immediate use. Entering the woods, the umbrella struck against the branches of the trees and frightened the mule; and, while I was endeavoring to close it, she fairly ran away with me.Having only a halter, I could not hold her, and, knocking me against the branches, she ran through the woods, splashed into the river, missing the fording-place, and never stopped till she was breast-deep.The river was swollen and angry, and the rain pouring down.Rapids were forming a short distance below.In the effort to restrain her I lost Mr. Catherwood’s blue bag, caught at it with the handle of the umbrella, and would have saved it if the beast had stood still; but as it floated under her nose she snorted and started back.I broke the umbrella in driving her across, and, just as I touched the shore, saw the bag floating towards the rapids, and Augustin, with his clothes in one hand and the teapot in the other, both above his head, steering down the river after it.Supposing it to contain some indispensable drawing-materials, I dashed among the thickets on the bank, in the hope of intercepting it, but became entangled among branches and vines.

I dismounted and tied my mule, and was two or three minutes working my way to the river, where I saw Augustin’s clothes and the teapot, but nothing of him, and, with the rapids roaring below, had horrible apprehensions. It was impossible to continue along the bank; so, with a violent effort, I jumped across a rapid channel to a ragged island of sand covered with scrub-bushes, and, running down to the end of it, saw the whole face of the river and the rapids, but nothing of Augustin. I shouted with all my strength, and, to my inexpressible relief, heard an answer, but, in the noise of the rapids, very faint; presently he appeared in the water, working himself round a point and hauling upon the bushes. Relieved about him, I now found myself in a quandary. The jump back was to higher ground, the stream a torrent, and, the excitement over, I was afraid to attempt it.It would have been exceedingly inconvenient for me if Augustin had been drowned.Making his way through the bushes and down to the bank opposite with his dripping body, he stretched a pole across the stream, by springing upon which I touched the edge of the opposite bank, slipped, but hauled myself up by the bushes with the aid of a lift from Augustin.

All this time it was raining very hard, and now I had forgotten where I tied my mule.We were several minutes looking for her, and, wishing everything but good luck to the old bag, I mounted.Augustin, principally because he could carry them more conveniently on his back, put on his clothes.

I rode on some distance, and again lost my way.It was necessary to enter the woods on the right.I had come out by a foot-path which I had not noticed particularly.There were cattle-paths in every direction, and within the line of a mile I kept going in and out, without hitting the right one.Several times I saw the print of Augustin’s feet, but soon lost them in puddles of water, and they only confused me more; at length I came to a complete standstill.It was nearly dark; I did not know which way to turn; and as Mr. Henry Pelham did when in danger of drowning in one of the gutters of Paris, I stood still and halloed.To my great joy, I was answered by a roar from Augustin, who had been lost longer than I, and was even in greater tribulation.He had the teapot in his hand, the stump of an unlighted cigar in his mouth, was plastered with mud from his head to his heels, and altogether a most distressful object.

We compared notes, and, selecting a path, shouting as we went, our united voices were answered by barking dogs and Mr. Catherwood, who, alarmed at our absence, and apprehending what had happened, was coming out with Don Miguel to look for us.I had no change of clothes, and therefore stripped and rolled myself in a blanket, in the style of a North American Indian.All the evening peals of thunder crashed over our heads, lightning illuminated the dark forest and flashed through the open hut, the rain fell in torrents, and Don Miguel said that there was a prospect of being cut off for several days from all communication with the opposite side of the river and from our luggage.Nevertheless, we passed the evening with great satisfaction, smoking cigars of Copan tobacco, the most famed in Central America, of Don Miguel’s own growing and his wife’s own making....

At daylight the clouds still hung over the forest; as the sun rose they cleared away; our workmen made their appearance, and at nine o’clock we left the hut.The branches of the trees were dripping wet, and the ground was very muddy.Trudging once more over the district which contained the principal monuments, we were startled by the immensity of the work before us, and very soon concluded that to explore the whole extent would be impossible.Our guides knew only of this district; but having seen columns beyond the village, a league distant, we had reason to believe that others were strewed in different directions, completely buried in the woods and entirely unknown.The woods were so dense that it was almost hopeless to think of penetrating them.The only way to make a thorough exploration would be to cut down the whole forest and burn the trees.This was incompatible with our immediate purposes, might be considered taking liberties, and could only be done in the dry season.

After deliberation we resolved first to obtain drawings of the sculptured columns.Even in this there was great difficulty.The designs were very complicated, and so different from anything Mr. Catherwood had ever seen before as to be perfectly unintelligible.The cutting was in very high relief, and required a strong body of light to bring up the figures, and the foliage was so thick and the shade so deep that drawing was impossible.

After much consultation we selected one of the “idols,” and determined to cut down the trees around it, and thus lay it open to the rays of the sun.Here again was difficulty.There was no axe, and the only instrument which the Indians possessed was the machete, or chopping-knife, which varies in form in different sections of the country.Wielded with one hand, it was useful in clearing away shrubs and branches, but almost harmless upon large trees; and the Indians, as in the days when the Spaniards discovered them, applied to work without ardor, carried it on with little activity, and, like children, were easily diverted from it.One hacked into a tree, and when tired, which happened very soon, sat down to rest, and another relieved him.While one worked there were always several looking on.I remembered the ring of the woodman’s axe in the forest at home, and wished for a few long-sided Green Mountain boys.

But we had been buffeted into patience, and watched the Indians while they hacked with their machetes, and even wondered that they succeeded so well. At length the trees were felled and dragged aside, a space cleared around the base, Mr. C.’ s frame set up, and he set to work. I took two Mestitzoes, Bruno and Francisco, and, offering them a reward for every new discovery, with a compass in my hand set out on a tour of exploration. Neither had seen “the idols” until the morning of our first visit, when they followed in our train to laugh at los Ingleses; but very soon they exhibited such an interest that I hired them.Bruno attracted my attention by his admiration, as I supposed, of my person; but I found it was of my coat, which was a long shooting-frock, with many pockets, and he said that he could make one just like it except the skirts.He was a tailor by profession, and in the intervals of a great job upon a roundabout jacket worked with his machete.But he had an inborn taste for the arts.As we passed through the woods nothing escaped his eye, and he was professionally curious touching the costumes of the sculptured figures.I was struck with the first development of their antiquarian taste.Francisco found the feet and legs of a statue, and Bruno a part of the body to match, and the effect was electric upon both.They searched and raked up the ground with their machetes till they found the shoulders, and set it up entire except the head; and they were both eager for the possession of instruments with which to dig and find this remaining fragment.

It is impossible to describe the interest with which I explored these ruins. The ground was entirely new; there were no guide-books or guides; the whole was a virgin soil. We could not see ten yards before us, and never knew what we should stumble upon next. At one time we stopped to cut away branches and vines which concealed the face of a monument, and then to dig round and bring to light a fragment, a sculptured corner of which protruded from the earth. I leaned over with breathless anxiety while the Indians worked, and an eye, an ear, a foot, or a hand was disentombed; and when the machete rang against the chiselled stone, I pushed the Indians away and cleared out the loose earth with my hands. The beauty of the sculpture, the solemn stillness of the woods, disturbed only by the scrambling of monkeys and the chattering of parrots, the desolation of the city, and the mystery that hung over it, all created an interest higher, if possible, than I had ever felt among the ruins of the Old World.After several hours’ absence I returned to Mr. Catherwood, and reported upward of fifty objects to be copied.

I found him not so well pleased as I expected with my report.He was standing with his feet in the mud, and was drawing with his gloves on, to protect his hands from the mosquitoes.As we feared, the designs were so intricate and complicated, the subjects so entirely new and unintelligible, that he had great difficulty in drawing.He had made several attempts, both with the camera lucida and without, but failed to satisfy himself or even me, who was less severe in criticism.The “idol” seemed to defy his art; two monkeys on a tree on one side appeared to be laughing at him, and I felt discouraged and despondent.In fact, I made up my mind, with a pang of regret, that we must abandon the idea of carrying away any materials for antiquarian speculation, and must be content with having seen them ourselves.Of that satisfaction nothing could deprive us.We returned to the hut with our interest undiminished, but sadly out of heart as to the result of our labors.

That day Mr. Catherwood was much more successful in his drawings; indeed, at the beginning the light fell exactly as he wished, and he mastered the difficulty. His preparations, too, were much more comfortable, as he had his water-proofs, and stood on a piece of oiled canvas used for covering luggage on the road. I passed the morning in selecting another monument, clearing away the trees, and preparing it for him to copy.At one o’clock Augustin came to call us to dinner.Don Miguel had a patch of beans, from which Augustin gathered as many as he pleased, and, with the fruits of a standing order for all the eggs in the village, being three or four a day, strings of beef, and bread and milk from the hacienda, we did very well.In the afternoon we were again called off by Augustin, with the message that the alcalde had come to pay us a visit.As it was growing late, we broke up for the day, and went back to the hut.We shook hands with the alcalde, and gave him and his attendants cigars, and were disposed to be sociable; but the dignitary was so tipsy he could hardly speak.His attendants sat crouching on the ground, swinging themselves on their knee-joints, and, though the positions were different, reminding us of the Arabs.In a few minutes the alcalde started up suddenly, made a staggering bow, and left us.

Mr. Catherwood went to the ruins to continue his drawings, and I to the village, taking Augustin with me to fire the Balize guns, and buy up eatables for a little more than they were worth. My first visit was to Don José Maria. After clearing up our character, I broached the subject of a purchase of the ruins; told him that, on account of my public business, I could not remain as long as I desired, but wished to return with spades, pickaxes, ladders, crowbars, and men, build a hut to live in, and make a thorough exploration; that I could not incur the expense at the risk of being refused permission to do so; and, in short, in plain English, asked him, “What will you take for the ruins?”I think he was not more surprised than if I had asked him to buy his poor old wife, our rheumatic patient, to practise medicine upon.He seemed to doubt which of us was out of his senses.The property was so utterly worthless that my wanting to buy it seemed very suspicious.On examining the paper, I found that he did not own the fee, but held under a lease from Don Bernardo de Aguila, of which three years were unexpired.The tract consisted of about six thousand acres, for which he paid eighty dollars a year; he was at a loss what to do, but told me that he would reflect upon it, consult his wife, and give me an answer at the hut the next day.

I then visited the alcalde, but he was too tipsy to be susceptible of any impression; prescribed for several patients; and instead of going to Don Gregorio’s sent him a polite request by Don José Maria to mind his own business and let us alone; returned and passed the rest of the day among the ruins.It rained during the night, but again cleared off in the morning, and we were on the ground early.My business was to go around with the workmen to clear away trees and bushes, dig, and excavate, and prepare monuments for Mr. Catherwood to copy.While so engaged, I was called off by a visit from Don José Maria, who was still undecided what to do; and not wishing to appear too anxious, told him to take more time, and come again the next morning.

The next morning he came, and his condition was truly pitiable. He was anxious to convert unproductive property into money, but afraid, and said that I was a stranger, and it might bring him into difficulty with the government. I again went into proof of character, and engaged to save him harmless with the government, or release him. Don Miguel read my letters of recommendation, and re-read the letter of General Cascara. He was convinced, but these papers did not give him a right to sell his land; the shade of suspicion still lingered; for a finale, I opened my trunk, put on a diplomatic coat, with a profusion of large eagle buttons. I had on a Panama hat, soaked with rain and spotted with mud, a check shirt, white pantaloons, yellow up to the knees with mud, and was about as outré as the negro king who received a company of British officers on the coast of Africa in a cocked hat and military coat, without any inexpressibles; but Don José Maria could not withstand the buttons on my coat; the cloth was the finest he had ever seen; and Don Miguel, and his wife, and Bartale realized fully that they had in their hut an illustrious incognito. The only question was who should find paper on which to draw the contract. I did not stand upon trifles, and gave Don Miguel some paper, who took our mutual instructions, and appointed the next day for the execution of the deed.

The reader is perhaps curious to know how old cities sell in Central America.Like other articles of trade, they are regulated by the quantity in market and the demand; but, not being staple articles, like cotton and indigo, they were held at fancy prices, and at that time were dull of sale.I paid fifty dollars for Copan.There was never any difficulty about price.I offered that sum, for which Don José Maria thought me only a fool; if I had offered more, he would probably have considered me something worse.

We had regular communications with the hacienda by means of Francisco, who brought thence every morning a large waccal of milk, carrying it a distance of three miles and fording the river twice. The ladies of the hacienda had sent us word they intended paying us a visit, and this morning Don Gregorio’s wife appeared, leading a procession of all the women of the house, servants, and children, with two of her sons. We received them among the ruins, seated them as well as we could, and, as the first act of civility, gave them cigars all around.It can hardly be believed, but not one of them, not even Don Gregorio’s sons, had ever seen the “idols” before, and now they were much more curious to see Mr. C.’s drawings.In fact, I believe it was the fame of these drawings that procured us the honor of the visit.In his heart, Mr. C.was not much happier to see them than the old Don was to see us, as his work was stopped, and every day was precious.As I considered myself in a manner the proprietor of the city, I was bound to do the honors; and, to the distress of Mr. C., brought them all back upon him.

Obliged to give up work, we invited them down to the hut to see our accommodations; some of them were our patients and reminded us we had not sent the medicines we promised.The fact is, we avoided giving medicines when we could, among other reasons, from an apprehension that if any one happened to die on our hands we should be held responsible; but our reputation was established; honors were buckled on our backs and we were obliged to wear them.These ladies, in spite of Don Gregorio’s crustiness, had always treated us kindly, and we would fain have shown our sense of it in some other mode than by giving them physic; but to gratify them in their own way, we distributed among them powders and pills, with written directions for use; and when they went away escorted them some distance, and had the satisfaction of hearing that they avenged us on Don Gregorio by praises of our gallantry and attentions.

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THE ROUTE OF THE NICARAGUA CANAL.

JULIUS FROEBEL.

At that time [1850] steamboats were not yet plying on the San Juan River and the Lake of Nicaragua, and I had to content myself with the accommodations of one of the large canoes of the natives called bongos, which were then the principal means of transport between the coast and the interior, for passengers as well as for merchandise. In company with two Americans, who, like myself, were anxious to proceed to Granada, I hired one of the largest of these clumsy little crafts, manned with ten boatmen or marineros, together with their captain or patron, all of them colored people from the interior.We laid in provisions for a fortnight, such being the full time of a passage which is now performed by steamers in two days.

We left San Juan on the 23d of November, and arrived at Granada on the 5th of the following month. In reference to the beauties of nature the trip is one of the most interesting that can be made, though the state of my health prevented my enjoying it.... An open shed, furnished with a hammock and surrounded by a plantain garden of half an acre, was the only improvement in an extent of more than a hundred miles. With this single exception, and with that of the site of the old castle of San Juan, more generally known by the popular name of Castillo Vièjo, the banks were covered with trees to the water’s edge, their branches often bearing a vegetation of vines, climbers, and parasites, so densely interwoven that the whole appeared like a solid wall of leaves and flowers.

I shall never forget the impressions of one night and morning on this river.Our boat had anchored in the midst of the stream.Strange forms of trees, spectre-like in the dark, stood before us, and seemed to move as the eye strove in vain to make out their real shape.From time to time a splash in the water, caused by the movement of an alligator, the bellowing of a manatee, the screeching of a night-bird, or the roar of some beast of the forest, broke the silence, and mingled at last with my feverish dream.

In the morning a song our boatmen addressed to the Virgin roused me from my sleep. It was a strain of plaintive notes in a few simple but most expressive modulations. Several years later I heard them again, sung by the Mexican miners in the subterraneous chapel of the quicksilver mine of New Almaden in California, and I never shall forget the deep emotion felt on both occasions, so widely different in every other respect. In the latter the scene passed in a narrow excavation before a little altar cut out of the natural rock, on which, before a gilded image of the Virgin, two thin tallow candles were casting their scanty light over the forms of fifteen or twenty men calling down the blessing of Heaven on their day of work in the interior of the mountain. In the former, it was in the brightness and splendor of a morning of which no description can convey a full idea to one who has had no experience in the most favored regions of a tropical climate. The sun was just rising, and as the first rays, gilding the glassy leaves of the forest, fell upon the bronze-colored bodies of our men, letting the naked forms of their athletic frames appear in all the contrast of light and shade, while accents plaintive and imploring strained forth from their lips, I thought to hear the sacred spell by which, unconscious of its power, these men were subduing their own half-savage natures.

At once the same song was repeated from behind a projecting corner of the bank, and other voices joined those of our crew in the sacred notes.Two canoes, covered from our view, had anchored near us during the night.The song at last died away in the wilderness.A silent prayer—our anchor was raised, and, with a wild shout of the crew, twelve oars simultaneously struck the water.The sun was glittering in the river.The tops of the trees were steeped in light, monkeys were swinging in the branches, splendid macaws flew in pairs from bank to bank; all around exhibited the glory and brightness of superabundant nature.

Near the mouth of the river, as far up as the higher end of its delta, the banks are almost on the water’s level, overgrown with reeds, mangroves, and a low species of palm-tree, the latter forming extensive thickets in the swamps.After a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles the land gradually becomes a little higher, and steep embankments of a brown or reddish clay rise to some ten or twenty feet above the water.The low palm thickets of the swampy region disappear, and a vegetation of splendid trees, mostly exogenous, overhung with blooming vines, takes their place.Flowery garlands, swung from branch to branch, hang over the stream, while now and then the slender shaft of one of the tallest species of the palm tribe wafts its little crown of feathery leaves high over the gorgeous masses of the heavier foliage.

Eight or ten miles higher up the region of the randales, or rapids, begins. Here the river, locked in between wooded hills, presents a new character of scenery. The trees, covering the hill-sides with an almost impenetrable forest, exhibit an extraordinary variety of forms in striking contrast. The most interesting situation in this region is that of the Castillo Vièjo. Here, where the river foams over a bed of rocks, stands the old Spanish castle of Don JuanSince 1780 it has remained a ruin, though Nicaragua has always kept a few soldiers here, occupying a shed at the foot of the hill on which the remains of the fort are seen.In the civil wars of the last years this place has repeatedly been occupied and evacuated by the contending powers.

Among the rapids, that of the Castillo Vièjo is the only one that forms a real impediment in the navigation of the river.With the necessary caution canoes may descend, and I myself have passed over it on my way back to the coast in a bongo carrying forty passengers; upward, however, all boats must be towed, after having been unloaded....

Above the region of the rapids the river is almost stagnant, and the designation of the aguas muertas, or dead waters, is not inappropriately applied to it.It is a deep and still water, full of fish, with low and swampy banks, on which the palm thickets of the delta reappear.

Beyond this latter portion of the river the Lake of Nicaragua opens to the view.On the little promontory formed by the lake and the inlet of the river the custom-house of Nicaragua, designated by the high-sounding name of the “fort of San Carlos,” has been established.There are a few houses at this place, and a small military force is kept up to protect the establishment and, in case of necessity, enforce the payment of the dues.The ruins of an old Spanish castle still exist here, but they are hidden among the trees and shrubs with which they are overgrown.

The view from this elevation has a peculiar character of grandeur.At the foot of the hill a broad sheet of water is spread, studded, in the immediate neighborhood, with some green islands of diminutive dimensions, and extending, in a northwesterly direction, as far as the eye can reach.To the left, a low wooded shore begins at the outlet of the lake, and continues in that direction till it is lost in the distance of the western horizon.A chain of high mountains, cast in a shroud of dark forests, rises in the rear, covering an unknown region of Costa Rica.It comprises several active volcanoes, which on late occasions have illumined the surface of the lake by their flames and red-hot streams of lava.To the right, the view does not extend beyond the nearest hills; but at a short distance from the lake it ranges over a long line of broken eminences, with the mountain-chain of Chontales in the rear, bordering like a wall the table-land of Upper Mosquitia.Hill and dale, forests and savannas, appear in endless variety in this direction.On the distant horizon in the centre of the view the two cones of the island of Ometepe are seen, faintly traced, and as their forms are lifted upward by refraction, they seem to swim over the water.

At the very spot where the San Juan River leaves the lake the Rio Frio enters it. This is a river coming down from the mountains of Costa Rica, through an absolute wilderness which, it is asserted, has never been trodden by the foot of a civilized man. The dense forests of this region are inhabited by a warlike tribe of Indians who refuse to have any intercourse with the rest of the world. They are said to be of very fair complexion, a statement which has caused the appellation of Indios blancos or Guatusos,—the latter name being that of an animal of reddish-brown color, and intended to designate the color of their hair. It is stated that not only do they not allow a foreigner to enter their territory, but that they are even in the habit of killing those of their own people who again fall into their hands after having been away among the civilized inhabitants of the neighboring settlements....

While in California, I heard of a young German, living in the neighborhood of San Francisco, who recounts a little romance of adventures he met with among this people.Though the story was not told to me by the man himself, still, as it was repeated by a trustworthy friend who had derived it from the original source, I may be allowed to introduce it here.

The young man was on his way to California.When at San Carlos he had some difference or quarrel with his travelling companions, and, being afraid of a pistol-ball or a bowie-knife, took the desperate resolution of swimming to the opposite side of the river, where he soon fell into the hands of a body of these Indians.He was tied to a tree, and they then held a council as to the manner—so at least he believed—of putting him to death.Suddenly, however, as it has happened before in similar cases, a young girl, the daughter of the chief, hurried forth, clasped her arms round the neck of my blue-eyed countryman, and gave a favorable turn to his fate.

Of course, he married the girl, and, as the consort of this Indian princess, he spent a few months in the forest, till he was ungrateful enough to forsake his generous bride, and avail himself of an opportunity to swim back to San Carlos, continuing, after this romantic episode, his journey to California.

According to his statements, he would have remained with the Indians had he been able to endure the life in the wilderness, which he found rather too ill-provided with accommodations for enjoying his honeymoon. During the rainy season the tribe lived almost exclusively on the trees, and he speaks in very high terms of the dexterity with which they would leap from branch to branch, a mode of travelling in which he often found it too difficult to follow his nimble spouse.At the time of each full moon the whole tribe met in council, for which the place was designated from one meeting to the next by the chief, and whatever was done by common agreement was regulated according to the phases of the moon.

Some years before the period of my first arrival in Nicaragua, the officer then in command of the fort of San Carlos fitted out an expedition for the purpose of exploring the country on the Rio Frio, which is known to be rich in gold.This little corps, having hit upon a deserted village of the Indians on the bank of the river, and resting in the shade of some trees in the outskirts of the forest, was suddenly assailed by a shower of arrows, and, with the exception of the commanding officer, who was severely wounded, but succeeded in hiding himself between the reeds till a boat from the fort came to his rescue, every man of the expeditionary force was killed....

Our passage up the river had taken us nine days, making an average progress of about twelve miles per day. Three days more were spent in crossing the lake. With the native boatmen it seems to be a rule to abstain from using oars even when they are becalmed. Before we left the aguas muertas a small tree had been cut. This was now erected as a mast, a sail was spread, and slowly we began to move in the direction of Granada. Our navigation was of a very primitive kind. At night, while every soul on board slept soundly, our bongo was left to find its own way, which, however, it refused to do; for when we awoke at dawn I saw we were heading to the place we had come from. By and by, nevertheless, we drew nearer to our point of destination. When we had left the two peaks of Ometepe on one side, the summit of Mombacho, designating the site of Granada, gradually rose from the water.We passed the island of Zapotera, celebrated for its idols, which have been discovered and described by my friend Mr. Squier.It is uninhabited, and may be said to be a mountain covered with a forest, here and there interrupted by a savanna.Like other islands in this lake, it contains numerous wild animals, such as deer, peccaries, monkeys, and panthers....

On the evening of the 5th of December we doubled the outermost rock of the Corrales or Isletas, a cluster of more than a hundred diminutive islands at the foot of the Mombacho, and a few hours after dark landed on the playa, or beach, of Granada.

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THE DESTRUCTION OF SAN SALVADOR.

CARL SCHERZER.

On the 12th and 13th of April, 1854, there was heard in the upper part of the city, towards the southwest, a hollow, subterranean, rumbling noise, which recurred at short intervals and continued for several minutes, appearing to come from the mountains which form a kind of large semi-circle at the foot of the volcano, but there was no shock whatever. On the Good Friday, at half-past seven in the morning, two slight shocks, quickly succeeding each other, were felt, and about ten minutes afterwards a rather stronger one.The roof and walls of my cottage shook, without my at first perceiving the cause; but a young Spaniard, who waited on me, said, quietly, “Es un temblor.”Being a native of the country, he was accustomed to the phenomenon, and thought little of it.

These tremblings and rockings of the earth, that seem so terrible to us Europeans, are such ordinary occurrences in the environs of San Salvador that the district has acquired the name of the “swinging mat;” but these shocks, though frequent, had never been hitherto of the violent and destructive character which they have assumed at Valparaiso and Lima, where about once in a century the destruction of a town is reckoned on as a matter of course.

The volcano of Isalco, too, being in constant activity, and only forty-eight miles south of the city of San Salvador, had always been regarded as a chimney and safety-valve, affording a free vent for the steam and other dangerous products of the subterranean furnace.

The shocks were repeated at tolerably regular intervals, two or three in an hour, during the whole of the Good Friday, and all had the same direction,—namely, from west-southwest to east-northeast; at which point, a league from the town, lies the great crater of Cuscatlan, about five hundred feet above San Salvador.

The ceremonies of the Good Friday proceeded with the accustomed pomp, and people did not think of disturbing their processions, or their visits to the cathedral, on account of the earthquake; though occasionally, when there came a shock rather stronger than usual, some of the devout crowd did turn pale and make a rush towards the doors.

At half-past nine in the evening there came a shock so violent that the houses were shaken to the foundations, the roofs cracked, plaster and tiles fell, and the walls in many places were rent.The houses are all low and broad, without upper stories, the walls mostly of clay, which is very elastic, and the rafters made of pliable, closely-plaited cane, admirably adapted to resist the most violent shocks; otherwise the houses would have fallen in a mass with this one, which lasted eight seconds, the ground undulating like the ocean.Every one rushed out into the open air, but a full hour passed without any further movement.We determined, nevertheless, not to sleep under a roof; but my countryman, Mr. Kronmeier, the Prussian vice-consul, who came home about eleven o’clock, laughed at our caution, and went to bed as usual in his bedroom.He was used to these unpleasant occurrences; though he confessed that, during a residence of sixteen years in Central America and Mexico, he had never felt in one day so many shocks as during the one just past.

The old volcano of Cuscatlan, from which the shocks appeared to proceed, lies, as I have said, about three miles from the city; viewed from this direction, it forms a beautiful cone, with a gently rounded summit, and its sides are clothed from top to bottom with wood; its crater is still quite perfect, a mile and a half in diameter, and filled with water at the bottom....There exists no certain record of the former activity of this volcano; but according to tradition an eruption of lava from a cleft in its side took place in 1650, and overwhelmed the village of Neliopa; but according to others it was merely an eruption of mud and not of fire....

The morning of Easter Sunday was announced as usual by the firing off of rockets and a joyous burst of military music. The multitude betook themselves in festival procession to the Cathedral, to witness the celebration of high mass; the houses were gayly adorned with branches of palm and banana-leaves, and the “Sanctissimum” was borne in triumph through the streets, followed by crowds of señors and señoritas in their gayest attire....On this Easter Day, as on preceding ones, the people, after having performed their devotions like good Catholics, gave themselves up to festivity and enjoyment, and the day closed with music, feasting, and fireworks.

Immediately after nine o’clock, however, a shock occurred more violent than the strongest felt on the Good Friday.I was unwell with a slight feverish attack, and had gone to bed, but was awakened by the noise.Some walls fell in, many houses were rent, and a part of the ceiling of my room fell, striking me on the head and face, and for some minutes blinding me with the dust.I sprang from my bed, and groped my way to the door, which unluckily I had locked; but after a time I succeeded in getting it open, and made my way to the court-yard, where I found the rest of the inhabitants of the house praying and screaming.

After a few moments had elapsed, however, they had quite got over their fright, and were laughing and joking at their previous consternation and precipitate flight. Unless the houses actually fall, people do not, after the first moment, think much of these shocks, but this time they did take the precaution to put all their doors open, and had their beds carried out into the court. Mine was placed under the gallery of the corridor, and a great deal of compassion was expressed for me when they found I had been a little hurt. A young doctor, who occupied the room next to mine, thought there would be no strong “temblor” again to-night, but an aged priest said that this house was old and decayed, and it was very necessary to be careful. My housemates then went back into their rooms, and, though they kept the doors open, consumed with a good appetite the remainder of the Easter feast, the conversation the while turning, of course, almost exclusively on the “temblor.”

I lay gazing up into the night sky, not at all inclined to sleep.The day had been, as usual, very warm, the thermometer at noon showing 88° Fahrenheit; a heavy mass of clouds (strato-cumulus) lay piled up about the waning moon, but dispersed towards ten o’clock, and the moon then shone brightly through a clear and tranquil atmosphere.A few light scattered clouds of the cirrus and cirro-stratus lay motionless at a few points on the horizon, but there was nothing to portend any unusual phenomenon.

At thirty minutes past ten, however, came the shock that laid the city of San Salvador in ruins.It began with a terrific noise, the earth heaving as if lifted by a subterranean sea; and this movement, and the thunder accompanying it, continued for ten or twelve seconds, while the crash and uproar of falling buildings were still more deafening than the thunder.An immense and blinding cloud of dust arose, through which were heard the shrieks and supplications of the flying people, calling on “Maria Santissima” and all other saints; and at length a hymn, in thousand-voiced chorus, which was heard plainly, through all the other noises, at a distance of a mile and a half from the town, by a family of German emigrants with whom I was acquainted.

I had witnessed many terrible scenes of war and revolution in the Old World, but there at least they were visible enemies of flesh and blood with whom people had to contend; but here were unknown, terrific, incalculable forces at work, of whose nature they had only the vaguest idea. The shocks went on, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, and with very brief intervals, until, by the evening of Easter Monday, one hundred and twenty had been counted, and they were accompanied all the time by hollow thunder and detonations, as if a tremendous battle were raging beneath the earth.People now abandoned all thoughts of their property, and sought only to save their lives, for, with the continual oscillations of the ground in all directions, rents and chasms were opening on it, so that no one knew whether it might not the next moment yawn beneath their feet and engulf every living soul.After every new shock I noticed that the people changed their prayers and the names of the saints they were invoking; but whether the saints did not hear, or could not or would not help them, the subterranean artillery continued to bellow forth its fearful salvos with unmitigated fury.

Towards one in the morning, one of my acquaintances came climbing over the ruined wall of our court-yard to inquire after me, as he knew I was unwell; and he then proposed to me to take a walk through the town by moonlight. We took the direction of the market-place, where the Cathedral stood; and from what I saw I can truly say that the whole city was destroyed, for I did not see a single house uninjured. Those that were not lying in ruin had so many rents, and damages of various kinds, as to be quite uninhabitable. The Cathedral—an elegant rather than imposing building—had escaped with less damage than many other churches; but the clock-tower had fallen, the portal was lying in fragments, and the walls were gaping open in two or three places.

The interior of the Franciscan convent, the door of which stood wide open, presented a sad picture of desolation. So many stones had fallen from the roof and such large portions of the walls, that most of the altars lay scattered in fragments, or were covered with rubbish; several of the colossal figures of saints had fallen from the niches, and lay with their finery all covered with dust and stones; but the people, who the day before had been carrying them about in triumph, now did not trouble themselves any more about them: everybody was occupied in saving his life, or, if possible, his most valuable possessions.

Of the new university buildings only one wing was left standing: it was the one containing the clock-tower, and in this the clock was still going on, regularly striking the hours.The roof of the Episcopal Palace had fallen in, and some stones had struck the sacred head of the bishop with no more ceremony than had been shown towards our profane pates, though this bishop was Don Tomaso Saldana, a man most justly held in high repute for the excellence of his life.Much injury had also been sustained by the President of the Republic, Señor Duenas, who was originally a monk, but afterwards a lawyer and statesman, and perhaps the man of the greatest capacity in the whole country.

The streets were empty and desolate, and we had to scramble over heaps of ruins to get through them: not a creature was to be seen but a few sentinels, and in the interior of the houses also there reigned the stillness of the grave.Even in the broadest streets the people did not think themselves safe, and rich and poor were huddled together indiscriminately in the great square, praying, singing, and screaming whenever a new shock startled them with its terrible explosion; but fortunately, in the midst of all this, the new President, Don José Maria San Martin, showed much presence of mind, and gave his orders for the preservation of property with much composure.

The rising sun of Easter Monday morning shone on a mournful spectacle, and the few people who were left in the town wandered about looking pale and worn, the women with a total disregard of their dress very unusual with them.Among these I noticed the wife of the President, who was entreating him to fly, like so many others, from the scene of danger; but he remained faithful to duty, and was exerting himself vigorously to keep order.He had established a kind of court-martial under a tent in the University Square, before which every thief caught in the act was brought, and, on the evidence of two witnesses against him, immediately shot.

Since the ruins of San Salvador could now no longer offer me a shelter, I set off on foot, at an early hour, towards the hacienda of Mr. Kronmeier, and on the way felt four more shocks, the strongest of which lasted six or seven seconds, and was accompanied by violent oscillations of the ground, and detonations like the salvos from Vesuvius, when, in the lesser eruptions, you stand near the crater while stones are being thrown up.I was now more than ever convinced that the centre of the subterranean action was very near, and that the explosive steam and glowing masses of the interior were seeking a new outlet.

The country-house of Mr. Kronmeier was still standing, but its thick walls had been rent in so many places that it offered only an uncomfortable and insecure shelter.From the steep cliffs on the left of the river’s bed masses of rock and earth had fallen, and the hot springs at the foot of the hill had ceased to flow; the mill-stream was dry; one of the cocoa-palms was prostrate, and the whole landscape, so lovely before, had a dejected and melancholy aspect, increased, of course, by the general flight of the inhabitants of the district....The shocks still went on, though they were not so frequent as on the two Easter nights; and, as the subterranean forces were evidently struggling for a new vent, no one could feel himself safe within the sphere of their operations.

Many of the people whom we met, however, were leaving the place, though not so much for any reason of this kind as on account of a prophecy of the worthy bishop, “that before the new moon the whole district of San Salvador, with the ruins of the city, would be swallowed up.”But, unluckily for the bishop’s character as a prophet, the prediction was not fulfilled.

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SCENES IN TRINIDAD AND JAMAICA.

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

Trinidad is the largest, after Jamaica, of the British West Indian Islands, and the hottest absolutely after none of them. It is square-shaped, and, I suppose, was once a part of South America. The Orinoco River and the ocean-currents between them have cut a channel between it and the mainland, which has expanded into a vast shallow lake known as the Gulf of Paria. The two entrances by which the gulf is approached are narrow, and are called bocas, or mouths,—one the Dragon’s Mouth, the other the Serpent’s. When the Orinoco is in flood the water is brackish, and the brilliant violet hue of the Caribbean Sea is changed to a dirty yellow; but the harbor which is so formed would hold all the commercial navies of the world, and seems formed by nature to be the depot one day of an enormous trade.

The town has between thirty and forty thousand people living in it, and the rain and the Johnny crows [a black vulture that acts as scavenger] between them keep off pestilence.Outside is a large savanna or park, where the villas are of the successful men of business.One of these belonged to my host, a cool, airy habitation, with open doors and windows, overhanging portico, and rooms into which all the winds might enter, but not the sun.A garden in front was shut off from the savanna by a fence of bananas.At the gate stood as sentinel a cabbage-palm a hundred feet high; on the lawn mangoes, oranges, papaws, and bread-fruit-trees, strange to look at, but luxuriantly shady.Before the door was a tree of good dimensions, whose name I have forgotten, the stem and branches of which were hung with orchids which G—— had collected in the woods.

The borders were blazing with varieties of the single hibiscus, crimson, pink, and fawn-color, the largest that I had ever seen. The average diameter of each single flower was from seven to eight inches. Wind streamed freely through the long sitting-room, loaded with the perfume of orange-trees; on table and in bookcase the hand and mind visible of a gifted and cultivated man. The particular room assigned to myself would have been delightful, but that my possession of it was disputed, even in daylight, by mosquitoes, who for blood-thirsty ferocity had a bad pre-eminence over the worst that I had ever met with elsewhere. I killed one who was at work upon me, and examined him through a glass.Bewick, with the inspiration of genius, had drawn his exact likeness as the devil,—a long black stroke for a body, a nick for a neck, horns on the head, and a beak for a mouth, spindle arms, and longer spindle legs, two pointed wings, and a tail.Line for line, there the figure was before me, which in the unforgetable tail-piece is driving the thief under the gallows, and I had a melancholy satisfaction in identifying him.I had been warned to be on the lookout for scorpions, centipedes, jiggers, and land-crabs, who would bite me if I walked slipperless over the floor in the dark.Of these I met with none, either there or anywhere, but the mosquito of Trinidad is enough by himself.For malice, mockery, and venom of tooth and trumpet he is without a match in the world.

From mosquitoes, however, one could seek safety in tobacco-smoke, or hide behind the lace curtains with which every bed is provided.Otherwise I found every provision to make life pass deliciously.To walk is difficult in a damp, steamy atmosphere, hotter during daylight than the hottest forcing-house in Kew....Beautiful, however, it was beyond dispute.Before sunset a carriage took us around the savanna.Tropical human beings, like tropical birds, are fond of fine colors, especially black human beings, and the park was as brilliant as Kensington Gardens on a Sunday.At nightfall the scene became even more wonderful, air, grass, and trees being alight with fireflies, each as brilliant as an English glow-worm.The palm-tree at our own gate stood like a ghostly sentinel clear against the starry sky, a single long dead frond hanging from below the coronet of leaves and clashing against the stem as it was blown to and fro by the night-wind, while long-winged bats swept and whistled over our heads.