150 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



basco, and the other had been obliged to leave on 

 account of illness. The mayoral remembered us, 

 but we did not know him ; and we determined to 

 pass on and take up our abode immediately in the 

 ruins. Stopping but a few minutes, to give direc- 

 tions about the luggage, we mounted again, and in 

 ten minutes, emerging from the woods, came out 

 upon the open field in which, grand and lofty as 

 when we saw it before, stood the House of the 

 Dwarf ; but the first glance showed us that a year 

 had made great changes. The sides of the lofty 

 structure, then bare and naked, were now covered 

 with high grass, bushes, and weeds, and on the top 

 were bushes and young trees twenty feet high. 

 The House of the Nuns was almost smothered, and 

 the whole field was covered with a rank growth of 

 grass and weeds, over which we could barely look 

 as we rode through. The foundations, terraces, and 

 tops of the buildings were overgrown, weeds and 

 vines were rioting and creeping on the facades, and 

 mounds, terraces, and ruins were a mass of destroying 

 verdure. A strong and vigorous nature was strug- 

 gling for mastery over art, wrapping the city in its 

 suffocating embraces, and burying it from sight. It 

 seemed as if the grave was closing over a friend, and 

 we had arrived barely in time to take our farewell. 



Amid this mass of desolation, grand and stately 

 as when we left it, stood the Casa del Gobernador, 

 but with all its terraces covered, and separated from 

 us by a mass of impenetrable verdure. 



