re
family.

[To be continued.]

HUNTING A PASS.

A SKETCH OF TROPICAL ADVENTURE.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER II.

On the 18th of April, having collected such information bearing on
our purposes as it was possible to obtain, we left La Union, and
fairly commenced the business of "Hunting a Pass." To reach the
valley of the Goascoran, on the extent and character of which so much
depended, it was necessary to go round the head of the Bay of La
Union. For several miles our route coincided with that of the _camino
real_ to San Miguel, and we rode along it gayly, in high and hopeful
spirits. The morning was clear and bright, the air cool and
exhilarating, and the very sense of existence was itself a luxury. At
the end of four miles we struck off from the high road, at right
angles, into a narrow path, which conducted us over low grounds,
three miles farther, to the Rio Sirama, a small stream, scarcely
twenty feet across, the name of which is often erroneously changed in
the maps for that of Goascoran or Rio San Miguel. Beyond this stream
the path runs over low hills, which, however, subside into plains
near the bay, where the low grounds are covered with water at high
tide. The natives avail themselves of this circumstance, as did the
Indians before them, for the manufacture of salt. They inclose
considerable areas with little dikes of mud, leaving openings for the
entrance of the water, which are closed as the tide falls. The water
thus retained is rapidly evaporated under a tropical sun, leaving the
mud crusted over with salt. This is then scraped up, dissolved in
water, and strained to separate the impurities, and the saturated
brine reduced in earthen pots, set in long ranges of stone and clay.
The pots are constantly replenished, until they are filled with a
solid mass of salt; they are then removed bodily, packed in dry
plantain-leaves, and sent to market on the backs of mules. Sometimes
the pots are broken off, to lighten the load, and great piles of
their fragments--miniature _Monti testacci_--are seen around the
_Salinas_, as these works are called, where they will remain long
after this rude system of salt-manufacture shall be supplanted by a
better, as a puzzle for fledgling antiquaries.

Six miles beyond the Rio Sirama we came to another stream, called the
Siramita or Little Sirama, for the reason, probably, as H. suggested,
that it is four times as large as the Sirama. It flows through a bed
tw