48 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



paper was broken, and the bread, fowls, and eggs were 

 thoroughly seasoned with this new condiment. All the 

 beauty of the scene, all our equanimity, everything 

 except our tremendous appetites, left us in a moment. 

 Country taverns rose up before us ; and we, who had 

 been so amiable, abused Augustin, and wished him the 

 whole murderous seasoning in his own body. "We 

 could not pick out enough to satisfy hunger. It was 

 perhaps the most innocent way of tasting gunpowder, 

 but even so it was a bitter pill. "We picked and made 

 excavations for immediate use, but the rest of our 

 stores was lost. 



This over, we mounted, and, fording the stream, 

 continued our descent. Passing off by a spur of the 

 mountain, we came out upon an open ridge, command- 

 ing a view of an extensive savannah. Very soon we 

 reached a fine table of land, where a large party of 

 muleteers on their way to Yzabal were encamped for 

 the night. Bales of indigo, which formed their car- 

 goes, were piled up like a wall ; their mules were pas- 

 turing quietly near them, and fires were burning to 

 cook their suppers. It was a great satisfaction to be 

 once more in an open country, and to see the mount- 

 ain, with its dense forest, lighted up by the setting sun, 

 grand and gloomy, and ourselves fairly out of it. With 

 ten hours of the hardest riding I ever went through, we 

 had made only twelve miles. 



Descending from this table, we entered a plain thick- 

 ly wooded, and in a few minutes reached a grove of 

 wild palm-trees of singular beauty. From the top of 

 a tall naked stem grew branches twenty or thirty feet 

 long, spreading from the trunk, and falling outward 

 with a graceful bend, like enormous plumes of feath- 

 ers ; the trees stood so close that the bending branches 



