290 THE ADVENTURES OF 



human force, the rocks came rolling down, dashing together 

 under the force of the liquid avalanche. 



One minute more and it would have been all over with 

 us, or, at the very least, we should have lost all our baggage 

 and weapons, without which our position must have been 

 truly critical. As it was, our hats only had sailed off in 

 company with our covering ; this loss much vexed us, for 

 none of us except PEncuerado could walk with a bare head 

 under the rays of a tropical sun. We should have been 

 somewhat consoled by meeting with a palm-tree ; but in the 

 mean time, the Mistec, like all his countrymen, knew well 

 how to meet such an emergency. So we covered our heads 

 with the leaves of the water-lily, often used by the Indian 

 women for a parasol. 



We knew by experience the rapidity with which these 

 mountain torrents will overflow. If it had been a month 

 later during the rainy period, of course we should not have 

 exposed ourselves to the peril of camping in the bed of a 

 stream ; for we had remarked the evening before that the 

 sky was obscured by gray clouds, and this ought to have 

 put us on our guard. 



The furious waves continued to bear down with them, 

 without any effort, immense masses of rock ; but the body 

 of the water, which did not increase, showed us that it 

 would ebb as rapidly as it had swollen. L'Encuerado was 

 obliged to content himself with some muddy water for 

 making our coffee ; but if we had pretended to preserve all 

 the prejudices of civilized life, adieu to all our idea of 

 traversing Mexico. Besides this, we had a fresh disaster to 

 grieve over; the remainder of the raccoon, which we had 

 kept for our breakfast, had been lost in company with our 

 bag of rice. 



We started again, not much enlivened by this series of 

 misfortunes, satisfied with nibbling for breakfast some mor- 



