America.  It consists of a wooden frame supporting keys made of wood and metal, each of which gives forth its own note when struck with small hammers.  Below the keys of lowest tone are hung tubes, pipes, or gourds, as sounding boxes to increase the sound produced by striking the key.  Usually four players perform at one time, each using two or more little hammers.  The music is rapid and brilliant, somewhat resembling that of the piano.  The instrument usually has some fanciful name, which is painted upon it.  The one at Tanatepec was La Azteca (The Aztec Lady), while our next one was La reina de las flores (The queen of the flowers).  At Zanatepec, La Azteca was an advertising part of a traveling circus.  The troupe consisted of three men and three women, the latter of whom seemed to be mulattos.  The men were ridiculously garbed and painted to represent wild indians.  The real, live indians, who followed these clowns in delighted crowds, enjoyed thrills of terror at their whoops, fierce glances, and wild antics, and assured us that these actors were, if not the real thing, at least wonderfully accurate impersonations of the natives of the Estados unidos (United States)—­the land of the “Apaches.”

From Tanatepec we were in Chiapas, the southernmost state of the republic.  We struck out over a fine mountain road, passable for carts all the way to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of the state.  Our first ascent was over a magnificent mountain mass of syenite, which at some places seemed to be as fine as our own Quincy stone.  The road, with many short zigzags, made a remarkably abrupt ascent, and, having reached the crest, wound like a vast serpent along the summit.  As we descended into the following valley, we encountered a beautiful deer, which stood in the middle of the road, eyeing us with curiosity, until we were almost upon it, when it dashed into the thicket and then stopped to again eye us.  Upon attaining the second summit we were amid pines.  All day we had had a wind in our faces, cold and so strong as to almost blow us from the narrow ridge, yet the sky was cloudless.  Looking back from our summit, a magnificent view to the ocean was spread before us.  Below us were the mountains over which we had come, then a valley broken with mountains of a lesser size; beyond, was the dry, coastal plain, and yet beyond it, the sea.  The dark green pines, the blue sky, the brown hills, the gray plain, the stretch of blue-green waters, made a wonderful color combination.

The next two days were most uninteresting.  We were often reminded of the recent threat of war between Mexico and Guatemala, the disputed border-line between which we were now nearing.  We met marching bands of soldiers who were returning to Juchitan.  Officers were on horses, common soldiers on foot, pack-mules were laden with luggage, the women (accompanying their husbands) were weighed down with coffee-pots, bundles of clothes, and babies, all strapped on their backs