FROM QUEZALTENANGO TO THE PACIFIC. 163 
Here I bought my first mule, paying for her eighty 
dollars in Guatemaltecan money (silver of the value of 
the buzzard dollar of the United States), the purchaser 
giving United States gold at twenty per cent premium; 
consequently the mule cost really sixty-six dollars and 
sixty-seven cents. After riding her two months I sold her 
for a hundred dollars. We engaged two mozos de cargo, 
and then felt at leisure to look more about the city. Near 
the hotel was a chicheria , or place where chicha is sold. 
This drink is here made from jocotes, and the cider-like 
beverage is drunk from pint bowls or calabashes. Intoxi¬ 
cation follows; and we frequently heard women shrieking 
in the arms of men, while unearthly yells and laugh¬ 
ter greeted the outcries. Owing to indulgence in this 
dissipation, our mozos could not walk in the morning, 
and we spent some hours in searching for others. The 
best we could do was to get one for six reals to take our 
carcaste to Ciudad Vieja, the Jefe at Antigua giving me a 
requisition on the comandante there for another. We 
sent Santiago with a drunken mozo direct to Guatemala 
City; and we afterwards found that the wretched mozo, 
when w r ell out of the city, dropped his burden and ran 
away, compelling Santiago to get a substitute, with whom 
he arrived safely. 
For ourselves, we retraced the road of yesterday to 
Ciudad Vieja, and found the cabildo, where the soldiers 
captured the necessary mozo, — literally at the point of 
the bayonet; but he was a capital fellow, in spite of his 
forced service. While the hunt was in progress, we 
looked about the town; but there was not much to see, 
except the elaborately wrought doors of the church. 
There were few indications of the awful ruin the flood 
