FROM COBAN TO QUEZALTENANGO. 
135 
Connecticut valley. A low table, one chair, a hard-wood 
table called a bedstead, furnished this room; and there 
was one door and a single window, — the latter, with its 
iron grating, suggesting a prison-cell. It was clean and 
quiet, and good enough. It does not require long travel 
m the tropics to teach one that the less unnecessary fur¬ 
niture in a house, the fewer lurking-places for cockroaches, 
centipedes, scorpions, snakes, and other disagreeable ten¬ 
ants; and comparative emptiness decidedly reduces the 
temperature of a room. During the night my hammock 
broke down; and the sympathy Frank expressed as he 
was half-awakened by the noise, would have been very 
soothing had he not fallen asleep again in the midst of 
it, leaving me sitting on the floor. He continued his 
sympathy in the morning, when the dreadful jar was 
almost forgotten. 
Early next morning we were on our way, mounted bet¬ 
ter than we had been; for we left Frank’s mare with 
Santiago to rest for a week, and with the Jefe’s mules 
we rode briskly on to Argueta, — a small hamlet with a 
deserted convent or monastery, in front of which flowed 
a clear cool brook, and near by was an ingenio moved by 
water-power. We got our almuerzo here, early as it 
was, for we were warned that we should find nothing to 
eat until night. From Argueta the road was very hilly, 
and we climbed until my barometer said 10,450 feet. 
Wheat abounded everywhere, and there were fenced 
threshing-floors of beaten earth. The mozos we met car¬ 
ried packs of woollen blankets and redes (nets) of pottery; 
several had pine-boards hewn smooth, three feet wide by 
eight long. In the trees were flocks of bright-green par¬ 
rots. So many little streams had to be crossed that we 
