likely to be disturbed during the night, forgot the troub les of the flying inhabitants, and slept soundly.

On account of the difficulty of procuring mules, we did not set out till ten o'clock. The climate is the hottest in Central America, and insalubrious under exposure to the sun; but we would not wait. Every moment there were new rumours of the approach of the Honduras army, and it was all important for us to keep in advance of them. I shall hasten over our hurried journey through the State of San Salvador, the richest in Central America, extending a hundred and eighty miles along the shores of the Pacific, producing tobac co, the best indigo and richest balsam in the world. We had mountains and rivers, valleys and immense ravines, and the three great volcanoes of San Miguel, San Vicente, and San Salvador, one or the other of which was almost constantly in sight. The whole surface is volcanic; for miles the road lay over beds of decomposed lava, inducing the belief that here the whole shore of the Pacific is an immense arch over subterraneous fires. From the time of the independence this state stood foremost in the maintenance of liberal principles, and throughout it exhibits an appearance of improve ment, a freedom from bigotry and fanaticism, and a development of physical and moral energy not found in any other. The San Salvadoreans are the only men who speak of sustaining the integrity of the Republic as a point of national honour.

In the afternoon of the second day we came in sight of the Lempa, now a gigantic river rolling on to the Pacific. Three months before I had seen it a little stream among the mountains of Esquipulas. Here we were overtaken by Don Carlos Rivas, a leading Liberal from Honduras, flying for life before partisan sol

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diers of his own state. We descended to the bank of the river, and followed it through a wild forest, which had been swept by a tornado, the trees still lying as they fell. At the crossing-place the valley of the river was half a mile wide; but being the dry season, on this side there was a broad beach of sand and stones. We rode to the water's edge, and shouted for the boatman on the opposite side.. Other parties arrived, all fugitives, among them the wife and family of Don Carlos, and we formed a crowd upon the shore. At length the boat came, took on board sixteen mules, saddles, and luggage, and as many men, women, and children as could stow themselves away, leaving a multitude behind. We crossed in the dark, and on the opposite side found every hut and shed filled with fugitives; families in dark masses were under the trees, and men and women crawled out to congratulate friends who had put the Lempa between them and the enemy. We slept upon our luggage on the bank of the river, and before daylight were again in the saddle.

That night we slept at San Vicente, and the next morning the captain, in company with an invalid officer of Morazan's, who had been prevented by sickness from accompanying the general in his march against Guatimala, rode on with the luggage, while I, with Colonel Hoyas, made a circuit to visit El Infierno of the Volcano of San Vicente. Crossing a beautiful plain running to the base of the volcano, we left our animals at a hut, and walked some distance to a stream in a deep ravine, which we followed upward to its source, coming from the very base of the volcano. The water was

warm, and had a taste of vitriol, and the banks were incrusted with white vitriol and flour of sulphur. At a distance of one or two hundred yards it formed a ba

sin, where the water was hotter than the highest grade of my Reaumur's thermometer. In several places we heard subterranean noises, and toward the end of the ravine, on the slope of one side, was an orifice about thirty feet in diameter, from which, with a terrific noise, boiling water was spouted into the air. This is called El Infiernillo, or the "little infernal regions." The inhabitants say that the noise is increased by the slight est agitation of the air, even by the human voice. Approaching to within range of the falling water, we shouted several times, and as we listened and gazed into the fearful cavity, I imagined that the noise was louder and more angry, and that the boiling water spouted higher at our call. Colonel Hoyas conducted me to a path, from which I saw my road, like a white line, over a high verdant mountain. He told me that many of the inhabitants of San Miguel had fled to San Vicente, and at that place the Honduras arms would be repelled; we parted, little expecting to see each other again so soon, and under such unpleasant circumstances for him.

I overtook the captain at a village where he had breakfast prepared, and in the afternoon we arrived at Cojutepeque, until within two days the temporary capital, beautifully situated at the foot of a small extinct volcano, its green and verdant sides broken only by a winding path, and on the top a fortress, which Morazan had built as his last rallying-place, to die under the flag of the Republic.

The next day at one o'clock we reached San Salvador. Entering by a fine gate, and through suburbs teeming with fruit and flower trees, the meanness of the houses was hardly noticed. Advancing, we saw heaps of rubbish, and large houses with their fronts cracked

and falling, marks of the earthquakes which had broken it up as the seat of government, and almost depopulated the city. This series of earthquakes commenced on the third of the preceding October (the same day on which I sailed for that country), and for twenty days the earth was tremulous, sometimes suffering fifteen or twenty shocks in twenty-four hours, and one so severe that, as Mr. Chatfield told me, a bottle standing in his sleeping-room was thrown down. Most of the inhabitants abandoned the city, and those who remained slept under matting in the courtyards of their houses. Every house was more or less injured; some were rendered untenantable, and many were thrown down. Two days before, the vice-president and officers of the Federal and State Governments, impelled by the crisis of the times, had returned to their shattered capital. It was about one o'clock, intensely hot, and there was no shade; the streets were solitary, the doors and windows of the houses closed, the shops around the plaza shut, the little matted tents of the market-women deserted, and the inhabitants, forgetting earthquakes, and that a hostile army was marching upon them, were taking their noonday siesta. In a corner of the plaza was a barricado, constructed with trunks of trees, rude as an Indian fortress, and fortified with cannon, intended as the scene of the last effort for the preservation of the city. A few soldiers were asleep under the corridor of the quartel, and a sentinel was pacing before the door. Inquiring our way of him, we turned the corner of the plaza, and stopped at the house of Don Pedro Negrete, at that time acting as vice-consul both of England and France, and the only representative at the capital of any foreign power.

It was one of the features of this unhappy revolution,

that the Liberal party, before the friends and supporters of foreigners, manifested a violent feeling against them, particularly the English, ostensibly on account of their occupation of the miserable little Island of Roatan, in the Bay of Honduras. The press, i. e., a little weekly published at San Salvador, teemed with inflammatory articles against los Ingleses, their usurpation and ambition, and their unjust design of adding to their extended dominions the republic of Central America. It was a desperate effort to sustain a party menaced with destruction by rousing the national prejudice against strangers. A development of this spirit was seen in the treaty of alliance between San Salvador and Quezaltenango, the only two states that sustained the Federal Government, by which, in August preceding, it was agreed that their delegates to the national convention should be instructed to treat, in preference to all other things, upon measures to be taken for the recovery of the Island of Roatan; and that no production of English soil or industry, even though it came under the flag of another nation, and no effect of any other nation, though a friendly one, if it came in an English vessel, should be admitted into the territory until England restored to Central America the possession of that island. I do not mean to say that they were wrong in putting forth their claims to this island-the English flag was planted upon it in a very summary way-nor that they were wrong in recommending the only means in their power to redress what they considered an injury; for, as England had not declared war with China, it would have been rash for the states of San Salvador and Los Altos to involve themselves in hostilities with that overgrown power; but no formal complaint was ever made, and no nego