my companions and the luggage.  Curiously, none came for two whole days—­a very unusual occurrence—­and the boys remained prisoners in that dreary town for all that time.  For my own part, I was thankful to reach a place where a comfortable bed and certain meals were to be counted on.  My fever left me, but the following morning I found myself suffering from swollen jaws; every tooth was loose and sore, and it was difficult to chew even the flesh of bananas; this difficulty I had lately suffered, whenever in the moist mountain district of Pennsylvania, and I feared that there would be no relief until I was permanently out of the district of forest-grown mountains.  Nor was I mistaken, for ten days passed, and we had reached the dry central table-land of Mexico, before my suffering ended.  One day, while we were on the finca, considerable excitement was caused by one of the Indians working in the field being bitten by a poisonous serpent.  The man was brought at once to the house, and remedies were applied which prevented serious results, although his leg swelled badly.  The serpent was killed, and measured about five feet in length, having much the general appearance of a rattlesnake, but with no rattles.  Don Enrique says that the most dangerous snake in this district is a little creature more brightly colored, with a smaller head, which is less markedly flat, and with smaller fangs; he showed us one of these, not more than a foot in length, from whose bite a man on the plantation, a year before, had died.  In telling us of this event, he gave us a suggestion of the working of the contract-labor system; the man who died owed one hundred and forty pesos of work—­almost three years of labor; the jefe, indeed, had sent the son to work out the debt, but the young man soon ran away, and the most diligent effort to recapture him had failed.

[Illustration:  CHOL WOMEN; LA TRINIDAD]

Perhaps two hundred persons lived as workmen on the finca of El Triunfo.  They were, of course, all indians, and were about evenly divided between Tzendals and Chols; it was impossible to gather them for measurement till Sunday, when they all came to the house and the store.  It was a day of amusement and recreation for the laborers, a day when all of them—­men, women, children—­drank quantities of liquor.  It was interesting to watch them as they came up to the store to make their little purchases for the week.  All were in their best clothing, and family groups presented many interesting scenes.  On Sundays and fiestas, they play toro—­one man creeping into a framework of light canes covered with leather, meant to represent a bull, while others play the part of bull-fighters.  The Chols present a well-marked type.  They are short, broad-headed and dark-skinned; their noses are among the most aquiline in Mexico.  Men, especially those of Tumbala, have a characteristic mode of cropping the hair; that on the back of the head is cut close, leaving the hair of the forward third of the head longer.  The men are almost immediately recognized, wherever met, by the characteristic camisa, made of white cotton, vertically striped with narrow lines of pink, which is woven in the Chol towns, and does not appear to be used by other Indians.