54 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



like a decoy duck j but the rest had no disposition to 

 follow. The muleteer drove them in up to their necks, 

 but they ran back to the shore. Several times, by pelt- 

 ing them v^ith sticks and stones, he drove them in as 

 before. At length he stripped himself; and, vrading 

 to the depth of his breast, with a stick ten or twelve 

 feet long, succeeded in getting them all afloat, and on a 

 line within the reach of his stick. Any one that turn- 

 ed toward the shore received a blow on his nose, and 

 at length they all set their faces for the opposite bank ; 

 their little heads were all that we could see, aimed di- 

 rectly across, but carried down by the current. One 

 was carried below the rest ; and, when she saw her 

 companions landing, she raised a frightened cry, and 

 almost drowned herself in struggling to reach them. 



During all this time we sat in the canoe, with the 

 hot sun beating upon our heads. For the last two 

 hours we had suffered excessively from heat ; our 

 clothes were saturated with perspiration and stiff with 

 mud, and we looked forward almost with rapture to a 

 bath in the Motagua and a change of linen. We land- 

 ed, and walked up to the house in which we were to 

 pass the night. It was plastered and whitewashed, 

 and adorned with streaks of red in the shape of fes- 

 toons ; and in front was a fence made of long reeds, 

 six inches in diameter, split into two ; altogether the 

 appearance was favourable. To our great vexation, 

 our luggage had gone on to a rancho three leagues be- 

 yond. Our muleteers refused to go any farther. We 

 were unpleasantly situated, but we did not care to leave 

 so soon the Motagua river. Our host told us that his 

 house and all that he had were at our disposal ; but he 

 could give us nothing to eat ; and, telling Augustin to 

 ransack the village, we returned to the river. Every- 



