76 



INCIDENTS OF TKAVEL. 



when, according to the rules of courtesy, I offered for 

 her choice a cigar and a puro, she took the latter. But 

 it was so long since I had seen a woman who was at all 

 attractive, and her face was so interesting, her manners 

 were so good, her voice so sweet, the Spanish words 

 rolled so beautifully from her lips, and her frock was 

 tied so close behind, that, in spite of ten-year-old boy 

 and puro, I clung to my first impressions. 



The next morning we rose early. Our interesting 

 hostess and her fatherly husband were up betimes to as- 

 sist us. It would have been an offence to the laws of 

 hospitality to offer them money ; but Mr. C. gave the 

 boy a penknife, and I put on the finger of the sefiora a 

 gold ring, with the motto, " Souvenir d'amitie." It 

 was in French, and her husband could not understand 

 it, nor, unfortunately, could she. 



At seven o'clock we started. Passing the ruined 

 church and the old village, we rode over a rich valley, 

 so well cultivated with Indian corn that it gave a key 

 to the boy's question. Whether we had come to Chiqui- 

 mula to buy maize ? At a league's distance we came ta 

 the village of St. Stephanos, where, amid a miserable col- 

 lection of thatched huts, stood a gigantic church, like 

 that at Chiquimula, roofless, and falling to ruins. We 

 were now in a region which had been scourged by civil 

 war. A year before the village had been laid waste by 

 the troops of Morazan. 



Passing the village, we came upon the bank of a 

 stream, in some places diverted into water-courses for 

 irrigating the land ; and on the other side of the stream 

 was a range of high mountains. Continuing along it, 

 we met an Indian, who advised our muleteer that the 

 camino real for Copan was on the opposite side of the 

 river, and across the range of mountains. We returned 



