A VIRGINIAN MEXICAN. 



249 



he had long been a stranger, and he received us as 

 one in whom absence had only strengthened the links 

 that bound him to his country. 



Dr. James M'Kinney, whose unpretending name is 

 in Comitan transformed to the imposing one of Don 

 Santiago Maquene, was a native of Westmoreland coun- 

 ty, Virginia, and went out to Tobasco to pass a winter 

 for the benefit of his health and the practice of his pro- 

 fession. Circumstances induced him to make a journey 

 into the interior, and he established himself at Ciudad 

 Real. At the time of the cholera in Central America 

 he went to Quezaltenango, where he was employed by 

 the government, and lived two years on intimate terms 

 with the unfortunate General Guzman, whom he de- \ 

 scribed as one of the most gentlemanly, amiable, intel- 

 ligent, and best men in the country. He afterward re- 

 turned to Comitan, and married a lady of a once rich 

 and powerful family, but stripped of a portion of its 

 wealth by a revolution only two years before. In the 

 division of what was left, the house on the plaza fell to 

 his share ; and disliking the practice of his profession, he 

 abandoned it, and took to selling goods. Like every 

 other stranger in the country, by reason of constant wars 

 and revolutions he had become nervous. He had none 

 of this feeling when he first arrived, and at the time of 

 the first revolution in Ciudad Real he stood in the plaza 

 looking on, when two men were shot down by his side. 

 Fortunately, he took them into a house to dress their 

 wounds, and during this time the attacking party forced 

 their way into the plaza, and cut down every man in it. 



Up to this place we had travelled on the road to Mex- 

 ico ; here Pawling was to leave us and go on to the cap- 

 ital ; Palenque lay on our right, toward the coast of the 

 Atlantic. The road Dr. M'Kinney described as more 



Vol. II.— I i 



