352 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



had all been in worse straits, and were accommoda- 

 ting. 



Amid the excitement in the port caused by the 

 arrival of these strangers, the inhabitants were not 

 suffered to forget us. A large sea-bird, prepared hy 

 Doctor Cabot with arsenic, and exposed to the sun 

 to dry, had been carried off and eaten by a hog, and 

 the report got abroad that a hog sold that day had 

 died from eating the bird. This created somewhat 

 of a panic, and at night all who had partaken of 

 the suspicious meat were known throughout the 

 port. A scientific exposition, that even if the hog 

 had died from eating the bird, it did not follow that 

 those would die who had eaten of the hog, was by 

 no means satisfactory. 



The next day we completed laying in our stock 

 of provisions, to wit, chocolate, sweetened bread, 

 beef and pork in strings, two turtles, three bushels 

 of corn, and implements for making tortillas. We 

 had one other important arrangement to make, 

 which was the disposition of our horses ; and, ac- 

 cording to our previous plan, to avoid the long jour- 

 ney back through the interior we determined to 

 send Dimas with them to ValladoUd, and thence to 

 the port of Silan, a journey of two hundred and fifty 

 miles, while we should, on our return, continue down 

 the coast with the canoa, and meet him there. 



At nine o'clock we were taken off, one at a time, 

 in a small dug-out, and put on board our canoa. 

 We had no leave-takings. The only persons who 



