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precipice, and we met a caravan of mules at a narrow place, where there was no room to turn out, and we were obliged to go back, taking care to give them the outside. All the way down we were meeting them; perhaps more than five hundred passed us, loaded with wheat for the mills and cloths for Guatimala. In meeting so many mules loaded with merchandise, we lost the vague and indefinite apprehensions with which we had set out on this road. We were kept back by them more than half an hour, and with great labour reached the bottom of the ravine. A stream ran through it; for some distance our road lay in the stream, and we crossed it thirty or forty times. The sides of the ravine were of an immense height. In one place we rode along a perpendicular wall of limestone rock smoking with spontaneous combustion.

At twelve o'clock we commenced ascending the opposite side. About half way up we met another caravan of mules, with heavy boxes on their sides, tumbling down the steep descent. They came upon us so suddenly that our cargo-mules got entangled among them, turned around, and were hurried down the mountain. Our men got them disengaged, and we drew up against the side. As we ascended, toward the summit, far above us, were rude fortifications, commanding the road up which we were toiling. This was the frontier post of Los Altos, and the position taken by General Guzman to repel the invasion of Carrera. It seemed certain death for any body of men to advance against it; but Carrera sent a detachment of Indians, who clambered up the ravine at another place, and attacked it in the rear. The fortifications were pulled down and burned, the boundary lines demolished, and Los Altos annexed to Guatimala. Here

LOSING A GOOD FRIEND.

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we met an Indian, who confirmed what the muleteers had told us, that the road to Santiago Atitan, the place of residence of Don Saturnino's relatives, was five leagues, and exceedingly bad, and, in order to save our luggage-mules, we resolved to leave them at the village of Godines, about a mile farther on. The village consisted of but three or four huts, entirely desolate; there was not a person in sight. We were afraid to trust our mozos alone; they might be robbed, or they might rob us themselves; besides, they had nothing to eat. We were about at the head of the Lake of Atitan. It was impossible, with the cargo-mules, to reach Santiago Atitan that day; it lay on the left border of the lake; our road was on the right, and it was agreed for Don Saturnino to go on alone, and for us to continue on our direct road to Panachahel, a village on the right border opposite Atitan, and cross the lake to pay our visit to him. We were advised that there were canoes for this purpose, and bade farewell to Don Saturnino with the confident expectation of seeing him again the next day at the house of his relatives; but we never met again.

At two o'clock we came out upon the lofty table of land bordering the Lake of Atitan. In general I have forborne attempting to give any idea of the magnificent scenery amid which we were travelling, but here forbearance would be a sin. From a height of three or four thousand feet we looked down upon a surface shining like a sheet of molten silver, enclosed by rocks and mountains of every form, some barren, and some covered with verdure, rising from five hundred to five thousand feet in height. Opposite, down on the borders of the lake, and apparently inaccessible by land, was the town of Santiago Atitan, to which our friend was wend

ing his way, situated between two immense volcanoes eight or ten thousand feet high. Farther on was another volcano, and farther still another, more lofty than all, with its summit buried in clouds. There were no associations connected with this lake; until lately we did not know it even by name; but we both agreed that it was the most magnificent spectacle we ever saw. We stopped and watched the fleecy clouds of vapour rising from the bottom, moving up the mountains and the sides of the volcanoes. We descended at first by a steep pitch, and then gently for about three miles along the precipitous border of the lake, leaving on our right the camino real and the village of San Andres, and suddenly reached the brink of the table-land, two thousand feet high. At the foot was a rich plain running down to the water; and on the opposite side another immense perpendicular mountain side, rising to the same height with that on which we stood. In the middle of the plane, buried in foliage, with the spire of the church barely visible, was the town of Panachahel. Our first view of the lake was the most beautiful we had ever seen, but this surpassed it. All the requisites of the grand and beautiful were there; gigantic mountains, a valley of poetic softness, lake, and volcanoes, and from the height on which we stood a waterfall marked a silver line down its sides. A party of Indian men and women were moving in single file from the foot of the mountain toward the village, and looked like children. The descent was steep and perpendicular, and, reaching the plain, the view of the mountain-walls was sublime. As we advanced the plain formed a triangle with its base on the lake, the two mountain ranges converged to a point, and communicated by a narrow defile beyond with the village of San Andres.

THE LAKE OF ATITAN.

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Riding through a thick forest of fruit and flower trees, we entered the village, and at three o'clock rode up to the convent. The padre was a young man, cura of four or five villages, rich, formal, and polite; but all over the world women are better than men; his mother and sister received us cordially. They were in great distress on account of the outrage at Quezaltenango. Carrera's troops had passed through on their return to Guatimala, and they feared that the same bloody scenes were to be enacted all through the country. Part of his outrages were against the person of a cura, and this seemed to break the only chain that was supposed to keep him in subjection. Unfortunately, we learned that there was little or no communication with Santiago Atitan, and no canoe on this side of the lake. Our only chance of seeing Don Saturnino again was that he would learn this fact at Atitan, and if there was a canoe there, send it for us. After dinner, with a servant of the house as guide, we walked down to the lake. The path lay through a tropical garden. The climate was entirely different from the table-land above, and productions which would not grow there flourished here. Sapotes, hocotes, aguacates, manzones, pineapples, oranges, and lemons, the best fruits of Central America, grew in profusion, and aloes grew thirty to thirty-five feet high, and twelve or fourteen inches thick, cultivated in rows, to be used for thatching miserable Indian huts. We came down to the lake at some hot springs, so near the edge that the waves ran over the spring, the former being very hot, and the latter very cold.

According to Huarros, "the Lake of Atitan is one of the most remarkable in the kingdom. It is about twenty-four miles from east to west, and ten from north to

south, entirely surrounded by rocks and mountains. There is no gradation of depth from its shores, and the bottom has not been found with a line of three hundred fathoms. It receives several rivers, and all the waters that descend from the mountains, but there is no known channel by which this great body is carried off. The only fish caught in it are crabs, and a species of small fish about the size of the little finger. These are in such countless myriads that the inhabitants of the surrounding ten villages carry on a considerable fishing for them."

us,

At that hour of the day, as we understood to be the case always at that season of the year, heavy clouds were hanging over the mountains and volcanoes, and the lake was violently agitated by a strong southwest wind; as our guide said, la laguna esta mucha brava. Santiago Atitan was nearly opposite, at a distance of seven or eight leagues, and in following the irregular and mountainous border of the lake from the point where Don Saturnino left we doubted whether he could reach it that night. It was much farther off than we supposed, and with the lake in such a state of agitation, and subject, as our guide told us, at all times to violent gusts of wind, we had but little inclination to cross it in a canoe. It would have been magnificent to see there a tropical storm, to hear the thunder roll among the mountains, and see the lightnings flash down into the lake. We sat on the shore till the sun disappeared behind the mountains at the head of the lake. Mingled with our contemplations of it were thoughts of other and far distant scenes, and at dark we returned to the con

vent.

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