not only with the balance of our luggage, but high with maize, fodder, and great nets of ears of corn, to feed the animals.  We had supposed that two persons and part of the luggage would go in each of the carts, and never thought of carrying food enough to last four oxen eight days.  Crowding four people into our carreta made it impossible to lie down in comfort.  Still, such is the custom of the country, and we submitted.  During the day we heard a woman crying in a house.  Upon investigating, we found that she was the wife of a carretero who had been injured on the road, and for whom a carreta had been sent.  Shortly afterward, they brought the poor fellow into town, amid weeping and lamenting.  When they took him from the carreta in which he had been brought, he was supported by two men and helped into the house, where he was laid upon a hammock.  He groaned with pain, and a crowd of curious villagers pressed into the room.

It was easy to locate four broken ribs behind, and he complained of great internal bleeding.  It seemed that he had started to climb up onto his moving cart in the usual way, and the stake which he had seized broke, letting him fall to the ground under the wheel of the heavily-loaded cart, which passed over his body.

Finally, all was ready, and at about five in the evening we started.  Packed like sardines in a box, we were most uncomfortable.  Personally, I did not try to sleep, neither lying down, nor closing my eyes.  Shortly after leaving town, we crossed a running stream, and from the other side went over a piece of corduroy, upon which we jounced and jolted.  Soon after, we descended into a little gully, from which our team had difficulty in drawing us.  The baggage-cart had a more serious time; the team made several attempts to drag it up the slope, but failed, even though our whole company, by pushing and bracing, encouraging and howling, aided.  There was a real element of danger in such help, the slipping animals and the back-sliding cart constantly threatening to fall upon the pushers.  Finally, the cart was propped upon the slope, and its own team removed; our team, which was heavier and stronger, was then hitched on, but it was only with a hard tug, and with heavy pushing, that success was gained, and the cart reached the summit of the slope.  We crossed a fine marsh of salt water, quite like the lagoon at San Mateo del Mar, and were told that we were not far from the Juave town of San Dionisio.  From here, the country, was, for a distance, an open plain.  With the moonlight, the night was almost as bright as day; cold winds swept sheets of sand and dust over us.  At one o’clock, we happened upon a cluster of six or eight carts, drawn up for rest, and the company of travellers were warming themselves at little fires, or cooking a late supper.  We learned that this gypsy-like group was a compania comica, a comic theatre troupe, who had been playing at Tuxtla, and