ESQUIPULAS AND QUIRIGUA. 
215 
comfortable bed. We shared this loft with corn and 
poultry; and looking down into the common room be¬ 
neath us, we saw by the light of a bowl of oil strange 
domestic scenes. Women were swinging in hammocks 
and smoking cigars, and children lying naked on the bare 
earth floor; and it was pleasant to see such at-one-ness 
and the utter absence of anything like bashfulness. 
Our calendar alone informed us that the next day was 
Christmas, and we spent it in waiting for our mozos and 
bestias, who arrived about three o’clock. We sat on the 
sheet-iron pipes, fifteen inches in diameter, which were 
resting here on their way to the Friedmann mines, farther 
south. They kept us out of the mud, and were the only 
comfortable seats in the town. On the mango and orange 
trees we found a pretty little yellow orchid (Oncidium f). 
In the houses we saw tanning done, without a vat, by 
making a bag of the hide and filling it with the bark 
decoction, which slowly percolated through and was re¬ 
placed. The remains of an English steam-launch were 
scattered about, sheets of copper from her bottom serv¬ 
ing as clapboards to part of the house where we lodged. 
At night the men of the place were all drunk and very 
noisy. The fires were kept burning late, and cast weird 
gleams through the open slat walls into the darkness. 
Having engaged a guide for the so-called Ruinas at 
Quirigua, at eight o’clock the next morning we said our 
adios (after paying our hostess nineteen reals for our¬ 
selves and mozos) and started down the river bank. 
Across the river were the largest bambus we had seen in 
the country, some joints at least six inches in diameter. 
Our path led through a canebrake, and often so close on 
the loose banks of the Motagua that I feared we should 
