60 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



heads to search us on the road. If I had had a safe op- 

 portunity, I should have sent them back to San Salvador. 

 I could not intrust them with the old man, and we de- 

 liberated whether it was not better to return, and wait 

 the crisis at the capital ; but we thought it an object to 

 get near the coast, and perhaps within reach of a vessel, 

 and determined to continue. In about an hour we pass- 

 ed the same party dismounted, at some distance from the 

 road, before the door of a large hacienda, with some of 

 the men inside, and, fortunately, so far off that, though 

 we heard them hallooing at us, we could not understand 

 what they said. Soon after we descended a wild mount- 

 ain-pass, and entered El Baranco de Guaramal, a nar- 

 row opening, with high perpendicular sides, covered 

 with bushes, wild flowers, and moss, and roofed over 

 by branches of large trees, which crossed each other 

 from the opposite banks. A large stream forced its way 

 through the ravine, broken by trunks of trees and huge 

 stones. For half a league our road lay in the bed of 

 the stream, knee-deep for the mules. In one place, on 

 the right-hand side, a beautiful cascade precipitated it- 

 self from the top of the bank almost across the ravine. 

 A little before dark, in a grassy recess at the foot of the 

 bank, a pig-merchant had encamped for the night. His 

 pigs were harnessed with straps and tied to a tree, and 

 his wife was cooking supper ; and when we told him of 

 the foraging party at the other end of the ravine, he 

 trembled for his pigs. Some time after dark we reach- 

 ed the hacienda of Guaramal. There was plenty of sa- 

 cate in an adjoining field, but we could not get any 

 one to cut it. The major-domo was an old man, and 

 the workmen were afraid of snakes. Bating this, 

 however, we fared well, and had wooden bedsteads to 

 sleep on; and in one corner was a small space parti- 

 tioned off for the major-domo and his wife, 



