LAKE LEON. 
153 
mounted, the only difficulty being that our horse imagined him¬ 
self stuck in the mud. The captain had exhausted all the ar¬ 
guments of spurs and stogy, but could not succeed in dispelling 
from his mind this strange hallucination. We cut a couple of 
saplings , and after warping him u fore and aft,” half a dozen 
times, he came to the conclusion that there must be some mis¬ 
take about it, and moved on. We were destined to encounter 
other difficulties, for soon after overtaking our cart the axle 
broke, we unloaded, cut a new one, and after a detention of two 
hours, were again in motion. 
As if to seal our fate for the night, our cart became entangled, 
and fastened in a mud-hole; this was a most inauspicious state of 
things, and to say that we were vexed is using a tame term. 
There is always one alternative, in our case there were two; 
we could either stand up in the rain,, or lay down in the mud; 
we chose the former, and as soon as it was sufficiently light, 
disentangled our cart, and at nine arrived at Nagarotes. 
We were in a sad plight to make our appearance among 
bright eyes. We were in a similar condition to the individual 
who had not slept any for three nights—last night, to-night, and 
to-morrow night, with the addition, in our case, of having been 
thoroughly saturated with rain. Our driver, as if to show his 
superior wisdom, took his hat from beneath a rawhide in the 
cart, and dressed in dry pants and shirt, the first clothing he 
had had on since our first acquaintance with him. Nagarotes is 
a miserable town; the inhabitants a mixture of Spanish and In¬ 
dian, the latter predominating. They are all extremely robust 
and healthy in appearance. 
After breakfast we moved on, and at 12 M. arrived at Lake 
Leon. The appearance of this lake as it opened to our view 
was peculiarly striking. It is shut in by lofty mountains, which 
tower up in innumerable peaks of volcanic origin, from many 
of which the smoke curls gracefully out, commingling with the 
clouds. From the center of the lake rises an island of conical 
form, which towers up as if to look into the surrounding craters. 
While our driver was feeding his team we prepared for a bath. 
We were, however, much disappointed in the anticipated plea¬ 
sure, finding the heat of the water almost insufferable. Our first 
sensation was that of pain, and we were soon again in our 
