just visible through the wealth of plantain-trees by which they were surrounded, while the cattle themselves were dotted over the intervening space, cropping the young grass, which here looked brighter and fresher than in the valley below.  Impulsively my mule pricked her ears forward, and broke into a rapid trot.  Soon she stepped across the stream, which we had followed to its birthplace, now reduced to a trickling rivulet stealing out from a spring, “an eye of water,” (ojo de agua,) coyly hidden away under a clump of trees draped with evergreen vines at the foot of the neighboring hills.  I knew that we were at the “summit”; the faint swell of the savanna, scarcely perceptible to the eye, which supported the government rancho, it was clear, was the highest point between the two great oceans, and the cool breeze which fanned our foreheads was the expiring breath of the trade-winds coming all the way from the Bay of Honduras!  My mule halted at the rancho; I threw the bridle over her neck, and went forward on foot; but I had not proceeded a hundred paces before my attention was arrested by the cheerful murmur of another little stream, also descending from the foot of the mountain at our right,—­but this time, after traversing half the width of the savanna, it turned away suddenly to the north, and with a merry dash and sparkling leap started off on its journey to the Atlantic!  In that direction, however, a forest of tall pines still shut off the view, and it was not until I reached the summit of one of the lateral hills that I could look over and beyond them.  Then, for the first time, I saw the great plain of Comayagua, at a level some hundreds of feet below us, spreading away for a distance of forty miles, in a rich succession of savannas and cultivated grounds, dotted with villages, and intersected by dark waving lines of forest, marking the courses of the various streams that traverse it like the veins on an out-spread hand.  At its northeastern extremity, its white walls now gleaming like silver in the sunlight, and anon subdued and distant under the shadow of a passing cloud, was the city of Comayagua, unmistakable, from its size, but especially from the imposing mass of its cathedral, as the principal town of the plain, and the capital of the Republic.  Circling around this great plain, and, with the exception of only a narrow opening at its northern extremity, literally shutting it in like an amphitheatre, is a cincture of mountains, rising to the height of from three to six thousand feet,—­a fitting frame-work for so grand a picture.

I returned slowly to the rancho, where my companions were preparing our encampment, and communicated to them the result of my observations.  Singularly enough, there was no excitement; even H. forgot to inquire “what was the price of stock.”  But we took our dinner in calm satisfaction,—­if four tortillas, three eggs, six onions, and a water-melon, the total results of Dolores’s foraging expedition to the cattle-hacienda, equally divided between eight hungry men, can be called a dinner.