MEXICAN FOEEST. 



191 



several accounts were interesting, and curious in 

 the highest degree. We joined dinners, and sat 

 afterwards for upwards of three hours talking over 

 old and new adventures ; till, at length, the San 

 Bias party mounted and set off; while we, not 

 choosing to encounter the sun, looked about for 

 cool places to take our siesta. A great sugar- 

 mill close to lis, which had been working all day, 

 and screaking in the most frightful manner, now 

 stood still ; the labourers went to sleep under the 

 bushes ; the tired bullocks were dozing stupidly 

 in the sun, craunching, from time to time, some 

 dried Indian corn husks ; all the villagers had dis- 

 appeared ; everything was perfectly still ; and we 

 soon caught the drowsiness which universally pre- 

 vailed, and fell asleep in an open shed under a most 

 enormous tamarind tree, whose branches oversha- 

 dowed half the village. 



The rest of the journey lay through a thick 

 forest along wild mountain-paths, by which we 

 gradually ascended so high, that before the even- 

 ing there was a sensible change in temperature, 

 causing that bounding elasticity of spirits which 



