366 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



borders of a piece of woodland were singular trees, 

 with a tall trunk, the bark very smooth, and the branch- 

 es festooned with hanging birds' -nests. The bird was 

 called the jagua, and built in this tree, as the padre told 

 us, to prevent serpents from getting at the young. The 

 cura, notwithstanding his strange figure, and a life of 

 incident and danger, was almost a woman in voice, 

 manner, tastes, and feelings. He had been educated 

 at the capital, and sent as a penance to this retired cu- 

 racy. The visit of the padres had for the first time 

 broken the monotony of his life. In the political con- 

 vulsions of the capital he had made himself obnoxious 

 to the church government by his liberal opinions ; but 

 unable, as he said, to find in him any tangible offence, 

 his superiors had called him up on a charge of polluting 

 the surplice, founded on the circumstance that, in the 

 time of the cholera, when his fellow-creatures were ly- 

 ing all around him in the agonies of death, in leaning 

 over their bodies to administer the sacrament, his sur- 

 plice had been soiled by saliva from the mouth of a 

 dying man. For this he was condemned to penance 

 and prayers, from midnight till daybreak, for two years 

 in the Cathedral, deprived of a good curacy, and sent to 

 Palenque. 



At half past two we reached his sitio or small haci- 

 enda. In the apprehension of the afternoon's rain, we 

 would have continued to the end of our afternoon's 

 journey ; but the padre watched carefully the appear- 

 ance of the sky, and, after satisfying himself that the 

 rain would not come on till late, positively forbade our 

 passing on. His sitio was what would be called at 

 home a " new" place, being a tract of wild land of I do 

 not know what extent, but some large quantity, which 

 had cost him twenty-five dollars, and about as much 



