156 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



precipice, and we met a caravan of mules at a narrow 

 place, where there was no room to turn out, and we 

 were obliged to go back, taking care to give them the 

 outside. All the way down we were meeting them ; 

 perhaps more than five hundred passed us, loaded with 

 wheat for the mills and cloths for Guatimala. In meet- 

 ing so many mules loaded with merchandise, we lost 

 the vague and indefinite apprehensions with which we 

 had set out on this road. We were kept back by them 

 more than half an hour, and with great labour reached 

 the bottom of the ravine. A stream ran through it ; for 

 some distance our road lay in the stream, and we cross- 

 ed it thirty or forty times. The sides of the ravine were 

 of an immense height. In one place we rode along a 

 perpendicular wall of limestone rock smoking with 

 spontaneous combustion. 



At twelve o'clock we commenced ascending the 

 opposite side. About half way up we met another 

 caravan of mules, with heavy boxes on their sides, 

 tumbling down the steep descent. They came upon 

 us so suddenly that our cargo-mules got entangled 

 among them, turned around, and were hurried down 

 the mountain. Our men got them disengaged, and 

 we drew up against the side. As we ascended, to- 

 ward the summit, far above us, were rude fortifica- 

 tions, commanding the road up which we were toiling. 

 This was the frontier post of Los Altos, and the posi- 

 tion taken by General Guzman to repel the invasion 

 of Carrera. It seemed certain death for any body of 

 men to advance against it ; but Carrera sent a detach- 

 ment of Indians, who clambered up the ravine at an- 

 other place, and attacked it in the rear. The fortifica- 

 tions were pulled down and burned, the boundary lines 

 demolished, and Los Altos annexed to Guatimala. Here 



