left stood the roofless cathedral, and dotted thickly over the plain were other ruined churches, eighty, it is said, - which looked as if recently demolished. We had our bestias saddled, and rode over to Ciudad Vieja, distant about a league. This was the second city founded by Alvarado (Tecpan Quatemalan being the first), and destroyed, together with the widow of the Conquistador, in 1541, by the earthquake and torrent of water from the ancient crater of Agua. The town is small enough now. After watching a man make roquetas (rockets),1 we rode to the Baños de Medina, which we had some difficulty in finding; we took, however, at last a short cut through a coffee plantation where the berries were large and ripening. The baths are in a small house of several rooms. The one Frank and I occupied had a large tank, deep enough for a swim; the water was slightly sulphurous, and but a few degrees warmer than the atmosphere. It was well worth the real it cost us.

In the afternoon we strolled among the ruins of Antigua, which are very fascinating. All the churches were of solid masonry, with vaulted roofs, -some still entire, and supporting a mass of vegetation, among which the Phytolacca was common. The outlay of money in building all these elaborate churches must have been enormous for material and transportation (many of the tiles being Spanish), although the actual labor was by unpaid slaves. We were told strange stories of the skeletons of mother and child found walled in a church; tunnels

1 The cases of these rockets were of bambu, and usually three were attached to one stick. As they were fired in daylight, and valued for their effect upon the ear rather than the eye, the proportion of explosive powder was increased, each discharge giving three sharp cracks.

connecting the churches and nunneries just outside the city; infant skeletons in a vault of one of the nunneries, etc. With these romantic associations in mind, we poked

hither and thither among the mighty ruins; but we found only the curiosities of architecture (of these there were enough to occupy me many days) and the traces the treasure-hunters had left in the walls. Frank found

in one of the vaults a well-drawn fresco covered with a thick coat of whitewash, and we tried to pry off a portion; but could not succeed without too much damaging it. Horses were pasturing on the grass-grown roof of a part of one of the churches, and a few had portions still in use as places of worship, while another was occupied by a blacksmith. In one of these we saw some finely carved wooden panels. All about the city eucalyptus-trees had been planted. The roads are very good, and the alameda, or public promenade, is attractive. The corner houses often had most comfortable projecting windows, so placed that one could see in both streets at once.

There are two industries in Antigua of considerable interest to the visitor, the carving of cane-heads, which is done in a most artistic manner, equalling, perhaps, the famous ivory carvings of Dieppe, in Normandy; and the manufacture of dolls, or effigies, mostly of cloth, representing every costume and occupation of the Indios. These little figures - seldom more than five inches high -have often an expression that would not be thought possible, considering the material of their fabric. Sololà is another place where these dolls, or muñecos, are made, - a single family, I believe, having the monopoly; but in Antigua we found a much greater variety. Especially good are their figures to represent the Nativity of Christ; for it is customary in many of the towns to keep open house at Christmas-tide, and each household tries to provide a Bethlehem, much as in Germany a Christmastree is arranged; but the groups of Shepherds, the Wise Men from the East, as well as the Holy Family, are often made in the most careful and artistic way, all from bits of cloth.

Here I bought my first mule, paying for her eighty dollars in Guatemaltecan money (silver of the value of the buzzard dollar of the United States), the purchaser giving United States gold at twenty per cent premium; consequently the mule cost really sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents. After riding her two months I sold her for a hundred dollars. We engaged two mozos de cargo, and then felt at leisure to look more about the city. Near the hotel was a chichería, or place where chicha is sold. This drink is here made from jocotes, and the cider-like beverage is drunk from pint bowls or calabashes. Intoxication follows; and we frequently heard women shrieking in the arms of men, while unearthly yells and laughter greeted the outcries. Owing to indulgence in this dissipation, our mozos could not walk in the morning, and we spent some hours in searching for others. The best we could do was to get one for six reals to take our carcaste to Ciudad Vieja, the Jefe at Antigua giving me a requisition on the comandante there for another. We sent Santiago with a drunken mozo direct to Guatemala. City; and we afterwards found that the wretched mozo, when well out of the city, dropped his burden and ran away, compelling Santiago to get a substitute, with whom he arrived safely.

For ourselves, we retraced the road of yesterday to Ciudad Vieja, and found the cabildo, where the soldiers. captured the necessary mozo, literally at the point of the bayonet; but he was a capital fellow, in spite of his forced service. While the hunt was in progress, we looked about the town; but there was not much to see, except the elaborately wrought doors of the church. There were few indications of the awful ruin the flood

from Agua had brought upon the town in 1541; but some of the buildings seemed to be partly resting on substructures of older date. Some of the slaves in uniform called soldiers told us we could not go into the presence of the comandante without taking off our spurs; so I haughtily declined to go in, or even dismount, and ordered him to come out and receive the Jefe's letter. He meekly obeyed, seeming to be a very decent fellow. Clouds covered both volcanoes, and our road led southward between them. We had a good enough road, down hill constantly, and winding into the valleys on the side of Fuego, often crossing fine streams of clear cold water. The crater of the volcano was still smoking, — as it has been since 1880, when there was a slight eruption. We could see that the crater-wall was broken down to give issue to what looked more like scoriæ than lava. Gases have acted extensively on the whole summit, which displays many colors, from the decomposition of the lavas.

As the day closed, the road became bad and full of small stones. The foothills were capped with irregular masses of lava, which in the sunset looked not unlike the ruined castles on the Rhine. We were in the region of canefields, and we often caught a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. At seven we rode into Escuintla and found the hotel comfortable enough; but all night there was a horrid noise, drums, rockets, bombs, and shouts, and we dreamed that the town was being captured by

storm.

We had entered the region of railroads again; and our train started next morning at half-past six for San José, on the Pacific. The fare for the round trip was