UTILITY OP A FRIEND. 253 



item of revenue that the officers are vigilant, and the 

 day before we arrived twenty or thirty mule-loads that 

 had been seized were brought into Comitan ; but the 

 profits are so large that smuggling is a regular business, 

 the risk of seizure being considered one of the expenses 

 of carrying it on. The whole community, not except- 

 ing the revenue officers, are interested in it, and its ef- 

 fect upon public morals is deplorable. The markets, 

 however, are but poorly supplied, as we found. "We 

 sent for a washerwoman, but there was no soap in the 

 town. We wanted our mules shod, but there was only 

 iron enough to shoe one. Buttons for pantaloons, in 

 Bize, made up for other deficiencies. The want of soap 

 was a deplorable circumstance. For several days we 

 had indulged in the pleasing expectation of having our 

 sheets washed. The reader may perhaps consider us 

 particular, as it was only three weeks since we left 

 Guatimala, but we had slept in wretched cabildoes, 

 and on the ground, and they had become of a very 

 doubtful colour. In time of trouble, however, com- 

 mend me to the sympathy of a countryman. Don San- 

 tiago, alias Doctor M' Kinney, stood by us in our hour 

 of need, provided us with soap, and our sheets were pu- 

 rified. 



I have omitted a circumstance which from the time 

 of our arrival in the country we had noticed as extra- 

 ordinary. The horses and mules are never shod, ex- 

 cept perhaps a few pleasure horses used for riding about 

 the streets of Guatimala. On the road, however, we 

 were advised, after we had set out, that it was proper 

 to have ours shod ; but there was no good blacksmith 

 except at Quezaltenango, and as we were at that place 

 during a fiesta he would not work. In crossing long 

 ranges of stony mountains, not one of them suffered ex* 



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