80 
GUATEMALA. 
side was broken down; so it required care and courage 
to cross it. It was very similar in construction to mod¬ 
ern wire suspension-bridges, but wholly vegetable, there 
being not a particle of metal about it. 
A few miles farther brought us out of the wooded to 
the cleared land, where is the hamlet of Teleman, famed 
for its delicious oranges. Although nearly sundown, and 
cloudy, the thermometer stood at seventy-eight degrees. 
We found lodging at the house of Don Pablo, a fine-looking 
old man with a heavy gray beard. His little home was in 
the midst of orange and coffee trees close on the road, and 
only a light rail kept the too familiar cattle out of the 
house. We had no long time to look around before dark; 
but our comida was good, and the coffee grown there was 
very fine. The hospitable Don Pablo pointed to a pile of 
oranges on the floor and told us to help ourselves, which 
we did freely. Another Spaniard came in soon after we 
were settled, and I had the best chance I had ever had to 
exercise my u book Spanish.” I surprised Prank, and 
myself as well, obtaining from these two agreeable men a 
great deal of information about our road and the country 
generally. The room was certainly as strange a one 
as I had ever slept in,— a table in one corner, with a 
mahogany bench fifteen inches wide before it (on this 
bench a small child slept all night, without pillow 01 
covering) ; two hammocks ; a bedstead with mosquito¬ 
netting; piles of coffee, oranges, and other small matters, 
a shrine of tinsel containing two images, before whose 
dingy holiness a sardine-box lamp burned luridly; meat 
in strips hung from the roof. The chickens had all gone 
under the bed for the night; and when it was time foi 
the featherless bipeds to roost also, our host and his women 
