CLIMATE. 
On the 30th of July our party left Mina-titlan in two canoes, 
and an open boat, which we intended to carry over the Isthmus. 
The rains had already set in, and were unusually abundant this 
year. After fourteen days of exposure, fatigue, and privations, 
we landed at the Paso de la Puerta. Messengers having been 
immediately dispatched to Guichicovi for provisions and means 
of transportation, we for the first time since our departure from 
Mina-titlan had an opportunity of changing our garments and dry- 
ing our wet clothes. We remained in this spot for fifteen days, 
the swollen condition of the Sarabia River, and the consequent 
difficulty of crossing the mules, occasioning the delay. During 
this time we were living on spoiled rice, worm-eaten beans, and 
without salt and bread. We fortunately found in the neighbor- 
hood a large field of plantains ; they were unripe, but, such as 
they were, served us as our principal article of food, which we 
seasoned plentifully with red pepper, also found growing near at 
hand. Under these unfavorable circumstances my anxiety for 
the health of the party became extreme. One after another 
60on began to suffer from fever ; and while administering ap- 
propriate remedies, I watched the progress of each case with 
gloomy expectations of typhoid fever, or even of uncontrollable 
dysentery before me ; yet, to my utmost delight, a thorough 
sweating would put an end to all the febrile symptoms in the 
course of a few days, and my patients would only complain of 
not having enough to eat in order to recover their strength. The 
fever proved to be nothing more than the consequence of expo- 
sure, fatigue, and want of healthy diet during our ascent of the 
rivers, to which the bites of musquitoes and other insects con- 
tributed not a little. 
At the Paso de la Puerta the river plains terminate. Be- 
tween it and Mina-titlan there is but one inhabited place, called 
Hidalgo-titlan, or Pueblo de los Almagres. It is situated on the 
right side of the Coatzacoalcos, about twenty miles above Mina- 
titlan, on elevated land, and contains about four hundred resi- 
dent inhabitants, chiefly of the Aztec race, who are, with few 
exceptions, robust and healthy. Here we also found some of 
* the French colonists, who assured me, that as far as their health 
was concerned, they had no reason whatever to complain. Their 
