CHAPTER XV

Summary

On the first of May, with a bustle and confusion like those of May-day at home, we moved out of Don Santiago's house, mounted, and bade him farewell. Doubtless his daily routines have not since been broken by the visit of a countryman, and communication is so difficult that he never hears from home. He charged us with messages to his friend Doctor Coleman, United States consul at Tobasco, who was then dead; and the reader will perhaps feel for him when I mention that probably a copy of this work, which I intend to send him, will never reach his hands.

I must pass over the next stage of our journey, which was through a region less mountainous, but not less solitary than that we had already traversed. The first afternoon we stopped at the hacienda of Sotaná, belonging to a brother-in-law of Don Santiago, in a soft and lovely valley, with a chapel attached, and bell that at evening called the Indian workmen, women, and children to vesper prayers. The next day, at the abode of Padre Solis, a rich old cura, short and broad, living on a fine hacienda, we dined off solid silver dishes, drank out of silver cups, and washed in a silver basin. He had lived at Palenque, talked of Candones or unbaptized Indians, and wanted to buy my macho, promising to keep him till he died; and the only thing that relieves me from self-reproach in not securing him such pasture-grounds is the recollection of the padre's weight.