falls off below in a steep and almost precipitous descent to the river; and although it did not quite realize the idea we had formed of it from the description of our guide, it was sufficiently pokerish to inspire the most daring mountaineer with caution.  At any rate, most of our party dismounted, preferring to lead their mules around the point to having their heads turned in riding past it.  Exposed to the full force of the winds, which are drawn through this river-valley as through a funnel, and with a foothold so narrow, it was easy to believe that neither man nor beast could pass here during the season of the northers, except at great risk of being dashed down the declivity.

A little beyond the Portillo, the road diverges from the valley proper of the river, and is carried over an undulating country to the village of San Antonio del Norte, finely situated on a grassy plain, of considerable extent, a dependency of the valley of the Goascoran.  We had intended stopping here for the night; but the cabildo was already filled with a motley crowd of arrieros and others on their way to San Miguel.  A tall mestizo, covered with ulcers, sat in the doorway, and two or three culprits extended their claw-like hands towards us through the bars of their cage and invoked alms in the name of the Virgin and all things sacred.  We therefore contented ourselves with a lunch under the corridor of a neighboring house, and, notwithstanding it was late in the afternoon, pressed forward towards the little Indian town of San Juan, three leagues distant.

It was a long and rough and weary way, and as night fell without any sign of a village in front, we began to have a painful suspicion that we had lost our road,—­if a narrow mule-path, often scarcely traceable, can be dignified by that name.  So we stopped short, to allow a man on foot, whom we had observed following on our track for half an hour, to come up.  He proved to be a bright-eyed, good-natured Indian, who addressed us as "Vuestras Mercedes,” and who informed us not only that we were on the right road to San Juan, but also that he himself belonged there and was now on his way home.

“Good, amigo!—­but how far is it?”

"Hay no mas" (There is no more,) was the consoling response.

“But where is the town?”

"Alla!" (There!)

And he threw his hand forward, and projected his lips in the direction he sought to indicate,—­a mode of indication, I may add, almost universal in Central America, and explicable only on the assumption that it costs less effort than to raise the hand.

Our new friend was communicative, and told us that he had been all the way to Caridad to bring a priest to San Juan, "para hacer cosas de familia,” (to attend to family affairs,) which he explained as meaning “to marry, baptize, and catechize.”  The people of San Juan, he added, were too poor to keep a priest of their own; they couldn’t pay enough; and, moreover, their women were all old and ugly.  And he indulged in a knowing wink and chuckle.