CENTRAL AMERICAN HOSPITALITY. 421 



it to fail. The traveller may stop where he pleases, 

 and have house, fire, and vrater free, paying only for 

 the articles which he consumes. We had milk in 

 abundance, and the charge was six cents. Before 

 we resumed our journey the traveller whom we had 

 passed at the last village arrived, and, after he had 

 taken chocolate, we all started together. He was a 

 merchant, on his way to Leon, accoutred in the style 

 of the country, with pistols, sword, spatterdashes, and 

 spurs ; and as he was then suffering from fever and 

 ague, wore a heavy woollen poncha, a striped cotton 

 pocket-handkerchief around his head, and over it two 

 straw hats, one inside of the other. A young man, 

 mounted, and armed with a gun, was driving a cargo- 

 mule, and three mozos with machetes followed on foot. 



The whole of this region along the coast of the Pa- 

 cific is called the Tierra Caliente. At half past two, 

 after a desperately hot and dusty ride, without any wa- 

 ter, we reached a hacienda, the name of which I have 

 lost. It was built of poles and plastered with mud. 

 The major-domo was a white man, in bad health, but 

 very obliging, who lived by selling occasionally a fowl 

 or a few eggs to a traveller, and corn and water for 

 mules. There were no more of those beautiful streams 

 which had given such a charm to my journey in Costa 

 Rica. The earth was parched ; water was a luxury sold 

 for money. There was a well on the hacienda, and I 

 paid two cents apiece for our mules to drink. There 

 was a bedstead in the hut ; at four o'clock I lay down 

 for a few moments' rest, and did not wake till five the 

 next morning. On a line with the head of my bed was 

 a long log, squared and hollowed out, with a broad lid 

 on the top, and secured by a lock and key, containing 

 the corn and household valuables, and on the tpp of it 



