18953 Clean and Ai?y Lodgings 



■ II — .1- I .— _■ ^ ■■- ■ " ■■ ■ ■ .1 ^^ ri — 



George Warren Rogers. The latter, an able phy- New 

 sician, had fled from Vermont to recover his health /'■'^"'^■^ 

 in the equable climate of Sinaloa, which during the 

 clear, rainless winter seems absolutely perfect. The 

 same cannot be said, however, for the wet and sultry 

 summer. To Dr. Rogers I gave a copy of my poem, 

 of which he made a Spanish translation afterward 

 published in a Mexican journal. ' Mr. Felton, a 

 business man of the city, and his excellent wife re- 

 ceived us frequently in their hospitable home. 



At the British vice-consulate, a roomy structure 

 overlooking the tumultuous Olas Altas, we found 

 adequate quarters, very simple but clean and free 

 from the typical nocturnal fauna of Mexico. From 

 our land-side windows one could see the cemetery, 

 with its monuments serving as perches for a grim 

 array of scavenger birds. There roosted the two 

 species of vulture, the Turkey Buzzard and the 

 Carrion Crow, and one hawk, the calele or caracara, 

 which has adopted the vulture's trade. These fowl A 

 in black, taken in connection with a rusty hinge on ^"^'^^""^'^ 

 a swinging wooden blind of the Consulado, inspired 

 me to the following lines, sufficiently uncanny 

 perhaps to be inserted here, though with an apology 

 to my readers: 



I had a dream of roses In their bloom 

 Casting their petals ever on the grass 

 Over the way the beautiful must pass — 

 When suddenly there rose o'er their perfume 

 A sense of vultures sitting on my tomb 

 In grand impossible conventicle, 

 Debarring me from entering its cell. 

 "Aha, my soul," 1 cried, "is this thy doom? 

 An errant derelict on seas of gloom, 



C 529 1 



