38 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



hurry that he forgot to bring with him his Christian 

 papers from which I inferred that he was what would 

 be called in Maryland a runaway slave. He was a 

 man of considerable standing, being fireman on board 

 the steamboat at $23 a month ; besides which, he did 

 odd jobs at carpentering, and was, in fact, the princi- 

 pal architect in Yzabal, having then on his hands a 

 contract for $3500 for building the new house of Messrs. 

 Ampudia and Purroy. In other things, I am sorry to 

 say, Philip was not quite so respectable ; and I can only 

 hope that it was not his American education that led 

 him into some irregularities in which he seemed to 

 think there was no harm. He asked me to go to his 

 house and see his wife, but on the way I learned from 

 him that he was not married ; and he said, what I hope 

 is a slander upon the good people of Yzabal, that he 

 only did as all the rest did. He owned the house in 

 which he lived, and for which, with the ground, he had 

 paid twelve dollars ; and being a householder and an 

 American, I tried to induce him to take advantage of 

 the opportunity of the padre's visit, and set a good ex- 

 ample by getting married ; but he was obstinate, 

 and said that he did not like to be trammelled, and that 

 he might go elsewhere and see another girl whom he 

 liked better. 



While standing at his door, Mr. Catherwood passed 

 on his way to visit Mr. Rush, the engineer of the steam- 

 boat, who had been ill on board. We found him in 

 one of the huts of the town, in a hammock, with all 

 his clothes on. He was a man of Herculean frame, 

 six feet three or four inches high, and stout in propor- 

 tion ; but he lay helpless as a child. A single candle 

 stuck upon the dirt floor gave a miserable light, and a 

 group of men of different races and colour, from the 



