Part 6

We made an early start, as gladly saying good-by to San Pedro as we had regretfully bid farewell to La Breita the previous morning.

The road was a good one from a Honduranian standpoint, and the only novel feature of the landscape was the appearance of the rocks. The cliffs were black, and looked as if for centuries water had lashed in restless and often unsubdued fury around their bases, giving them that peculiar formation so well known to geologists.

All the plains were thickly strewn with black bowlders of sizes ranging from immensity to those applicable to building and paving purposes. Nowhere have I ever seen more convincing traces of the drift period.

As we were going over an open space where the sun shone more warmly than elsewhere, a great yellow and black snake lazily dragged itself across the road directly in front of me.

I was sorry to see it, not only because I have an innate loathing of anything that crawls in this smooth, sinuous, treacherous manner, but because I had wanted to make the journey without encountering a single experience of the kind.

According to our friend's representations, mostly derived from her imagination, aided by a school geography, the ground was fairly honeycombed with entrances to the abodes of these reptiles, and I fully expected to find them festooning trees, bushes, and fences, lying in wait within every tuft of grass, and in fact making my life one hideous, waking nightmare.

However, this was the first and, as was afterwards proved, the last creature of the kind I was called upon to view, either during my trip or my subsequent residence in the country up to the present time. Lizards I saw in plenty, but their shy, quick way of darting out of sight reminded me more of the bashful little squirrels at home than anything else. I really liked them, in their place of course.

It still lacked an hour of noon when we came to a running brook, upon whose bank grew a tree casting such an inviting shade that we could not resist its fascinations but dismounted, tied our mules, and began to wish and watch for the appearance of Eduardo.

Presently Vincent like

"Zaccheus, he Did climb a tree."

the sooner to perceive the coming of the expected lunch, and I indulged in a nap. The approach of a horseman aroused me, and false hopes together, and also brought my companion to the ground.

The rider, a young, good-looking man, whose toilet was the nearest approach to a civilized one I had recently come across, despite his bare feet, to which were strapped spurs, drew up in the middle of the brook, and after the customary friendly greeting, proceeded to inspect us in a most leisurely way.

Time, a good deal of time, passed before our servant came, but there he sat. The lunch was spread and partaken of long and heartily, and still he calmly surveyed us, not at all in an impertinent way, but just as if he were honestly interested. We offered him some jelly, which he ate in a totally unabashed manner, but withdrew not his gaze. We ignored him, but he took not the hint. Stay there he did until we were remounted, and then for miles and miles he rode along with us.

We were rather amused than otherwise at his course, though perhaps we experienced a scarcely recognized feeling of relief when we came to a place where our roads lay in different directions. He shook hands with us in the same friendly, impressive, almost warm manner, and then galloped merrily off as if he had fulfilled an arduous duty and now felt as if he had a right to enjoy himself.

Shortly afterward we came to a height overlooking the Yegnare Valley, one of the most beautiful and far-reaching scenes it has ever been my good fortune to behold.

Great pointed peaks kiss the sky on every side, and seem to shut out all the noise and strife of the world beyond, and like sentinels, grim and gaunt, guard intact the peace and prosperity of the vast plains within that natural wall.

Two farms occupy nearly all of the valley, and so extensive are they, that the farm-houses are four miles apart. The owner of both proved to be none other than the father of my companion, and though there was still one more day's journey before us, we already felt quite at home.

We made the descent and entered upon the broad domain of the Hacienda de San Francisco, the boundary of which, to my amazement, I found indicated by a very familiar American barb-wire fence.

We rode through fields where the grass waved high above our heads, over pasture plains where hundreds of cattle, mules, and horses roamed at will, and then, when the sun was sinking low, we came to the farmhouse, and here we dismounted to make our last night's stop.

The building is a remarkable one, having been a monastery years and years ago, when the Jesuit missionaries were devoting their energies and lives to the conversion of the untamed Indians.

It is one hundred and fifty feet long, probably one third as deep, and has walls a yard thick. All this is divided into five rooms--three large ones running the whole depth of the house and communicating with each other, and two smaller ones, one behind the other, and only had access to from the outside.

The floors are of stone, and it pleased me to fancy that many of the worn places had been formed by constant contact with the bended knees of the holy and indefatigable priests. The projecting roof of tiles forms a sort of porch, we would call it, all around the building, and is paved, as is also the yard for many feet. Beyond this the land gently slopes to a river, and still farther on a mountain rises up to limit the landscape and prevent our greedy eyes from drinking of beauty to a more than endurable state of intoxication.

It was blissful to lie in a hammock and watch the setting sun give here and there a lingering farewell touch as if loath to go and leave behind so much that was beloved, and then at the close of the short tropical twilight to see fair Luna crown, first with a halo of approaching glory and then with her own sweet self, the dark peak whose outlines rose sharp and clear against the star-pierced blue of the evening sky.

It was blissful, I say, to revel in this grand pastoral poem in the full consciousness that the transition to prose would be one of terror; to know that in one of the big, cool, clean rooms a comfortable bed was prepared for me, where I would lose myself in restful unconsciousness, guarded by the saint whose figure could be clearly defined in an old oil-painting on the wall, and which, with two others of a like kind, were relics, doubtless, of a chapel's previous decoration.

'Twas even so, and when I awoke in the morning to find a huge vessel of water from the river standing by a shallow tub hewn from the trunk of a tree, while near at hand were placed all the articles necessary for body and soul-satisfying ablutions, my perfect content knew not how to manifest itself.

Beautiful San Francisco! What happiness to fill the house with twenty chosen friends and there to dream away a month or more of idle joy! Surely after such dolce far niente days life could hold no bitterness for which we had not, in experience, a ready antidote.

Too soon, it seemed, we were forced to leave there, for we had a long, weary day of mountain climbing ahead of us.

"A bad road," Vincent said, and when he warned me thus I knew I could expect the worst.