A NOBLE HACIENDA. 



403 



At this place our Indian carriers left us, and we took 

 others from the hacienda, with whom we continued 

 three leagues farther to another hacienda of the family, 

 of much the same character, where we stopped to break- 

 fast. This over, we set out again, and by this time it had 

 become desperately hot. 



The road was very rough, over a bed of stone thinly 

 covered, with barely soil enough for the growth of scrub- 

 trees ; our saddles were of a new fashion, and most 

 painfully trying to those unused to them ; the heat was 

 very oppressive, and the leagues very long, till we 

 reached another hacienda, avast, irregular pile of build- 

 ings of dark gray stone, that might have been the castle 

 of a German baron in feudal times. Each of these 

 haciendas had an Indian name ; this was called the ha- 

 cienda of Vayalquex, and it was the only one of which 

 Donna Joaquina, in speaking of our route, had made any 

 particular mention. The entrance was by a large stone 

 gateway, with a pyramidal top, into a long lane, on the 

 right of which was a shed, built by Don Simon since his 

 return from the United States as a ropewalk for manu- 

 facturing hemp raised on the hacienda ; and there was 

 one arrangement which added very much to the effect, 

 and which I did not observe anywhere else : the cattle- 

 yard and water-tanks were on one side and out of sight. 

 We dismounted under the shade of noble trees in front 

 of the house, and ascended by a flight of broad stone 

 steps to a corridor thirty feet wide, with large mattings, 

 which could be rolled up, or dropped as an awning for 

 protection against the sun and rain. On one side the 

 corridor was continued around the building, and on the 

 other it conducted to the door of a church having a 

 large cross over it, and within ornamented with figures 

 like the churches in towns, for the tenants of the ha- 



