190 



MEXICO. 



The first part of our journey lay across low 

 swamps, covered with brushwood, and enveloped 

 in creeping, aguish-looking mists. In the course of 

 a few hours we began to ascend the hills, where 

 the country was richly wooded, the trees being tied 

 to one another by festoons of innumerable creep- 

 ers, waving gracefully above the impervious un- 

 derwood, which concealed the ground from our 

 view, and gave the forest precisely the air of an 

 Indian jungle. 



We passed several villages built of canes, with 

 peaked roofs, rising to twice the height of the 

 walls, thatched with the large leafy branches of 

 the cocoa-nut tree, fastened down by rattans. 

 At the half-way house, in the village of Fon- 

 sequa, we fell in with a party of English gentle- 

 men going down to the port. We had all met 

 before in the midst of the turbulent times at 

 Lima, and little expected to encounter one an^ 

 other, at the next interview, in the depths of a 

 Mexican forest. In the interval, the different 

 members of the company had visited, at very re- 

 markable moments, many of the revolutionized 

 countries ; so that, when we compared notes, th^ 



