which would have been beautiful in a picture, but was most infernally
unpoetical in reality.

"_Vamos! Por la Santissima Madre, vamos!_" yelled our guides, and the
cry was taken up by the Mexicans, in a shrill wild tone that jarred
strangely upon our ears, and made the horses start and strain forward.
Hurra! on we go, through thorns and bushes, which scratch and flog us,
and tear our clothes to rags. We shall be naked if this lasts long. It
is a regular race. In front the two guides, stooping, nodding, bowing,
crouching down, first to one side, then to the other, like a couple of
mandarins or Indian idols--behind them a Tzapotecan in his picturesque
capa, then the women, then more Tzapotecans. There is little thought
about precedence or ceremony; and Rowley and I, having been in the
least hurry to start, find ourselves bringing up the rear of the whole
column.

"_Vamos! Por la Santissima! Las aguas, las aguas!_" is again yelled by
twenty voices. Hang the fools! Can't they be quiet with their eternal
_vamos_? We can have barely two leagues more to go to reach the
_rancho_, or village, they were talking of, and appearances are not as
yet very alarming. It is getting rather thick to be sure; but that's
nothing, only the exhalations from the swamp, for we are again
approaching one of those cursed swamps, and can hear the music of the
alligators and bullfrogs. There they are, the beauties; a couple of
them are taking a peep at us, sticking their elegant heads and long
delicate snouts out of the slime and mud. The neighbourhood is none of
the best; but luckily the path is firm and good, carefully made,
evidently by Indian hands. None but Indians could live and labour and
travel habitually, in such a pestilential atmosphere. Thank God! we
are out of it at last. Again on firm forest ground, amidst the
magnificent monotony of the eternal palms and mahogany-trees. But--see
there!

A new and surpassingly beautiful landscape burst suddenly upon our
view, seeming to dance in the transparent atmosphere. On either side
mountains, those on the left in deep shadow, those on the right
standing forth like colossal figures of light, in a beauty and
splendour that seemed really supernatural, every tree, every branch
shining in its own vivid and glorious colouring. There lay the valley
in its tropical luxuriance and beauty, one sheet of bloom and blossom
up to the topmost crown of the palm-trees, that shot up, some of them,
a hundred and