A REAL DINNER. 



201 



had been a sort of triumphal march ; but at this place 

 we dined, i. e., we had a dinner. The reader may re- 

 member that in Costa Rica I promised to offend but 

 once more by referring to such a circumstance. That 

 time has come, and I should consider myself an ingrate 

 if I omitted to mention it. We were kept waiting per- 

 haps two hours, and we had not eaten anything in 

 more than twelve. We had clambered over terrible 

 mountains ; and at six o'clock, on invitation, with hands 

 and faces washed, and in dress-coats, sat down with the 

 corregidor. Courses came regularly and in right suc- 

 cession. Servants were well trained, and our host did 

 the honours as if he was used to the same thing every 

 day. But it was not so with us. Like Rittmaster Du- 

 gald Dalgetty, we ate very fast and very long, on his 

 principle deeming it the duty of every commander of a 

 fortress, on all occasions which offer, to secure as much 

 munition and vivas as their magazines can possibly hold. 



We were again on the line of Carrera's operations ; 

 the place was alive with apprehensions; white men 

 were trembling for their lives ; and I advised our host 

 to leave the country and come to the United States. 



The next morning we breakfasted with him, and at 

 eleven o'clock, while a procession was forming in the 

 plaza, we started for Quezaltenango, descended a ra- 

 vine commanding at every point a beautiful view, as- 

 cended a mountain, from which we looked back upon 

 the plain and town of Totonicapan, and on the top en- 

 tered a magnificent plain, cultivated with cornfields and 

 dotted with numerous flocks of sheep, the first we had 

 seen in the country ; on both sides of the road were 

 hedges of gigantic aloes. In one place we counted up- 

 ward of two hundred in full bloom. In the middle of 

 the plain, at the distance of two and a half leagues, we 



Vol. II.— C c 



