The ridge overlooking the town is of limestone, and is covered with a handsome growth of trees and grass.  The terrace on which the hermita is built is flat and cleared; it is reached by a gently graded ascent, with a flight of wide and easy steps, now much neglected.  The little building is dismantled, though there is some talk of reconstructing it.  Behind it is a well of vile and stagnant water, which is reputed to cure disease.  From the ridge a pretty view of Tekax is to be had, bedded in a green sheet of trees.  The town is regularly laid out, and presents little of interest, though the two-storied portales and the odd three-storied house of Senor Duarte attract attention.  There are also many high, square, ventilated shafts, or towers, of distilleries.  From the terrace where we stood, in the days of the last great insurrection, the indians swept down upon the town and are said to have killed 2,500 of the people, including men, women and children.

The school-teacher of the town is a man of varied attainments, being also a photographer, watch-maker, medical-adviser, chemist, and so forth.  His house is full of scientific instruments—­a really good camera, a fine aneroid barometer, several thermometers, including self-registering maximum and minimum, etc., etc.  All seem excellent in quality, but I could not learn that he makes any use of them, except the camera.  The cura, and the judge deride his possession of the instruments, doubting whether he knows how to use them.  They assert that he has an apparatus for projection, for which he paid 1,000 pesos, which has never yet been unpacked.  When we called on him he showed us, by his hygrometer, that the air was very humid, though the temperature was at 86 deg.  Fahr., and told us, what probably is true, that in this heavy, hot weather, every wound and bruise, however trifling, is likely to become serious.  In illustration of this fact, the cura mentioned that his Spanish carpenter, who merely bruised his leg against the table, has suffered frightfully for three months, having now an ugly sore several inches across, that makes walking difficult.  Great care is necessary with any injury that breaks or bruises the skin.  We ourselves had already experienced the fact that insect-bites became ugly open sores that showed no signs of healing; as a fact, none of us succeeded in curing such for several weeks after leaving Yucatan.  In the afternoon, the priest, the judge of primera instancia and myself took a coach to ride out to a neighboring hacienda, where there was a great sugar-mill, Louis accompanying us on horseback.  Our road ran alongside the ridge and consisted of red limestone-clay.  It was fairly good, though dry and dusty, and closely bordered with the usual Yucatecan scrub.  The ridge, along which we were coursing, is the single elevation in the peninsula; beginning in northeastern Yucatan, it runs diagonally toward the southwest, ending near Campeche.  It