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NARRATIVE OF A 



was the festival of the Ascension ; and he could not 

 think of going upon a journey on such a day without 

 previously hearing mass. And as this ceremony would 

 not take place till nine o'clock, he hoped I would defer 

 our departure till that hour. I argued and reasoned with 

 him, and tried to remove his scruples by adverting to the 

 old Spanish saying, that duty is before devotion. But he 

 retorted with another, equally good, which was : 



" Por oir misa y dar cebada, 

 Nunca se perdio jornada." 



And thereupon I yielded the point, and agreed not to set 

 out till he had performed his devotions. He then told 

 me that he had been a friar of the order of St. Francis, 

 and that, though religious orders were now extinct in 

 the country, it was his practice, on particular festivals, to 

 go to church in his monkish habits, which he carefully 

 retained, and hoped some day to resume. I no longer won- 

 dered at the scruples he had exhibited. The next morn- 

 ing, it was amusing to see Juan Rodriguez figuring, at 

 first, in the garb of a friar, and then, on doffing his habits, 

 transformed into something like a captain of banditti, 

 with his chamarra, or mantle, over one shoulder, a dag- 

 ger in his belt, and a rusty Toledo hanging from his side. 



It was near ten o'clock before we started from Ocotepe- 

 que. It was therefore deemed expedient not to stop till 

 we finished the day's journey, and we travelled, without 

 intermission, till five in the afternoon, when we came to 

 a village called el Sacario. The distance of this place 

 from Ocotepeque is eight leagues, or twenty-four miles, 

 nearly a regular day's work ; so that the saying of the 

 ex-friar, that in travelling the time employed in saying 

 your prayers, or in feeding your cattle, was never time 

 lost, was verified to the letter. As he had some acquaint- 

 ance with the place and its inhabitants, and as our stock 

 of provisions was not yet consumed, we found no diffi- 

 culty either in procuring a resting-place for the night, or 



