change opinions, ran silently and wildly down the street, and disappeared in the jungle. Then, in a quarter of an hour they returned one by one, or by twos and threes, and, seemingly without provocation, began to fight. As the combat deepened, the snarls, yells, and agonizing growls of the warriors split the air, and filled it with foam and fur. Presently, and as if by common consent, the battle ended, and the fighters trotted or limped for home. I began to wonder what it was all about, and while saying to myself, "What next?" I fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIX

IN THE HEART OF OLD HONDURAS

These are the tales those merry guest

Told to each other, well or ill;
Like summer birds that lift their crests

And twitter and again are still.

-Longfellow.

WHILE I resided in Guatemala City I was a daily visitor to the library of the university, where are shelved many of the books carried away from the monasteries when the property of the church was secularized in Guatemala. One afternoon I found

what was to me a treasure. The date of the publication of the brochure or bound pamphlet was 1576, and the title, "Report to His Catholic Majesty the King of Aragon and Castile by the Licentiate Don Diego Garcia de Palacio." Now who was Diego Palacio? Well, for our purpose it is enough for us to know that he was sent out to Central America by Philip II of Spain to report on the condition of the country. He was the first white man to explore the remains of the mystic city of Copan, and his description of the "ruins of these superb buildings constructed of hewn stone" is the most complete and satisfactory in existence. I will have occasion to cite him as authority-an authority supported by the testimonies of subsequent visitors -to corroborate me in statements that stagger

acceptance. To-day I confine myself to incidents of the route and the great forest "through which,' writes Palacio, "we cut our way to the silent city." We breakfasted on frijoles or black beans, tortillas and chocolate, shook hands with our Indian family, and before sunrise were in the saddles.

Before renewing our journey each morning I was particularly careful to see that the hair riata and hammocks were strung to the pommel of the Mexican saddle. The rains of the previous week had soaked the alluvial lands through which we were now travelling, and for hours our horses never broke their walk. In the afternoon we crossed the Morita ridges, and descending we entered the desert lands of Guetenango. After a few hours' ride we came upon a muleteers' encampment, and with them I desired to pass the night. Riding into the camp I asked to see "El señor capitan de los arrieros," and was at once confronted with a Hondurian Indian, a fairly tall, swarthy complexioned man with long, coarse hair and restless, piercing eyes. His name was Lopez, and after I told him who I was, my mission, and where I came from, I was at once made welcome.

Neither he nor any of his band had ever heard of Canada, and when I told of our inland seas, our rivers which were never dry, of our ice and snow fields, our beautiful summers, they expressed great astonishment. Darkness rapidly succeeds daylight in tropical latitudes, but before night shrouded us I noticed two of the muleteers on hands and knees

examining the ground. Then they unwound my riata, tied it to one of three others, and formed a ground circle of twenty feet in diameter. These deserts are infested with centipedes, scorpions, snakes and creeping things, full of venom and inimical to human life. The rough, fibrous surface of the horsehair rope, called a riata, keeps out all dangerous reptiles. Notwithstanding tales of travellers, tarantulas, scorpions, and even snakes never attack a sleeping man if he is quiet in his sleep. But the slightest movement is a suspicion of danger to the hideous creatures, and woe to the sleeping man who moves. We hear much of and fear more the tarantula that is sometimes found in the banana bunches sent to us from Florida, but the tarantula of Florida, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona is a gigantic bush spider, and not a tarantula. The bite of the bush spider, like that of our own black spider, means painful irritation and passing fever, but unless our blood be in a bad state, nothing more.

Here the tarantula, centipede and scorpion inject a lethal poison, and if the wound is not attended to at once death or very serious results follow. At Pinos I met an Indian whose whole hand and forearm were withered, dried up and wasted shockingly. While resting in the afternoon, a centipede crawled across his hand. He foolishly brushed it off, but was too late, and will carry through life a wasted arm and hand. If he had grimly set his teeth, watched and let him crawl, the ugly thing would have done him no harm. In these desert wastes, among

sage brush, cacti and mesquite the rattlesnake is king, but he is never the first to attack. If you approach too near he rattles a warning, and if you are for peace, turn aside and pass on. But if, after he speaks, you yet approach, woe to you; he strikes, and then for you it's the knife, whiskey or the grave. Much, however, depends on the condition of your blood, the age of the snake, the reserve of poison in his glands, and your physical state when struck. The horned rattlesnake strikes to kill, and death it is.

But the most awful thing in these Hondurian deserts is the El Muerte-the death. He is the PichuCoatle viper, about ten inches long, of a gray coppery hue, and for its size is the most deadly thing alive. For malignity, cunning and malevolence the El Muerte is in a class by itself. Its head is small, triangular or lance-shaped, its eyes are like the point of a needle heated, while back of each eye is a puffed gland, a diminutive reservoir of the most deadly poison. Its fangs are as delicate as the finest cambric needle, but once they pierce a victim where the flesh cannot in an instant be scooped out—not alone cut out-writhing death follows. Such is the Pichu-Coatle, a repulsive, loathsome microscopic monster. I once, in the town of Guzman, was brought by a friend to the chozas, or huts of two Indians, who survived the bite of the El Muerte. The first to whom I spoke was a manque-beti, a "snake man," who, like the Moki witch doctors, "had power over snakes." He was bitten