SUNSET SCENE. 



285 



to the banks of a beautiful stream, which makes Es- 

 cuintla, in the summer months of January and Febru- 

 ary, the great watering-place of Guatimala. The bank 

 was high and beautifully shaded, and, descending to 

 the river through a narrow passage between perpendic- 

 ular rocks, in a romantic spot, where many a Guatimala 

 lover has been hurried, by the charming influences 

 around, into a premature outpouring of his hopes and 

 fears, I sat down on a stone and washed my feet. 



Returning, I stopped at the church. The front was 

 cracked from top to bottom by an earthquake, and the 

 divided portions stood apart, but the towers were en- 

 tire. I ascended to the top, and looked down into the 

 roofless area. On the east the dark line of forest was 

 broken by the curling smoke of a few scattered huts, 

 and backed by verdant mountains, by the cones of vol- 

 canoes, with their tops buried in the clouds, and by the 

 Rock of Mirandilla, an immense block of bare granite 

 held up among the mountain tops, riven and blasted by 

 lightning. On the west the setting sun illuminated a 

 forest of sixty miles, and beyond shed its dying glories 

 over the whole Pacific Ocean. 



At two o'clock, under a brilliant moonlight, and with 

 a single guide, we started for the Pacific. The road 

 was level and wooded. We passed a trapiche or su- 

 gar-mill, worked by oxen, and before daylight reached 

 the village of Masagua, four leagues distant, built in a 

 clearing cut out of the woods, at the entrance of which 

 we stopped under a grove of orange-trees, and by the 

 light of the moon filled our pockets and alforgas with 

 the shining fruit. Daylight broke upon us in a forest 

 of gigantic trees, from seventy-five to a hundred feet 

 high, and from twenty to twenty-five feet in circumfer- 

 ence, with creepers winding around their trunks and 



