Anahuac Part 14

c.o.c.kfighting is such a pa.s.sion here that we thought it as well to see it for once. Santa Ana, now he has retired from politics, spends his time at Carthagena pretty much entirely in this his favourite sport, which forms one of the great items among the pleasures and excitements of a Mexican life. We saw a couple of mains fought, in which the victorious birds were dreadfully mangled, while the vanquished were literally cut to pieces; as much money changed hands as we should have thought sufficient to buy up the whole of the people present, c.o.c.kpit and all. Then, being both agreed that it was a disgusting sight, we went away.

Before we left Mexico we were taken by our man Antonio to a cutler's shop, where the princ.i.p.al trade seemed to be the making of these _cuchillos_ to arm the c.o.c.ks with. We bought a couple of pairs of them, and had them carefully fitted up. The old cutler was quite delighted, and remarked that foreigners must acknowledge that there were some things which were done better in Mexico than anywhere else. I fear we left him under the pleasing impression that we were taking home the blades to introduce as models in our own benighted country.

The Mexican is a great gambler. Bad fortune he bears with the greatest equanimity. You never hear of his committing suicide after being ruined at play; he just goes away, and sets to work to earn enough for a fresh stake. The government have tried to put down gambling in the State of Mexico, but not with much success. For three days in the year, however, at the festival of San Agustin de las Cuevas, public gambling-tables are tolerated, though soldiers and officials are strictly forbidden to play, an injunction which they carefully set at nought. Oddly enough, the government, while doing all it could to keep its own functionaries away from the _monte_ table, did not scruple to send a military escort to convoy the bankers with their bags of gold from Mexico to San Agustin. On one of the three days, Mr. Christy and I went there. There was a great crowd, this time mostly a well-dressed one, and the c.o.c.kpit was on a large scale. But of course the great attraction was the _monte_, which was being played everywhere, the stakes in some places being coppers, in others silver, while more aristocratic establishments would allow no stake under a gold ounce. Dead silence prevailed in these places, and the players seemed to pride themselves upon not showing the slightest change in their countenances, whether they won or lost. The game itself is very simple, and has some points of resemblance to that of lansquenet, known in Europe. The first two cards in the pack, say a four and a king, are laid down, face up, on the table, and the gamblers put down their money against one or the other.

Then the _croupier_ deals the cards out slowly and solemnly one after another, calling out their names as they fall, until he comes--say to a king; when those who have betted on the king have their stakes doubled, and the others lose theirs. The banker has a great advantage to compensate him for his expense and risk. If the first card which is thrown out be one of the two numbers on the table, the banker withholds a quarter of the stake he would otherwise have lost, paying only a stake and three-quarters, instead of two stakes. Now, as there are forty cards in a Spanish pack, two of which have been already thrown out, the chances for a throw favourable to the banker are about one in six, so that he may reckon on an average profit of about two per cent, on all the money staked.

As for the players, they sat round the table, carefully noticing the course of the games, and regulating their play accordingly, as they do at Baden-Baden and Hombourg. I suppose that now and then these scientific calculators must be told that their whole theory of chances is the most baseless delusion, but they certainly do not believe it; and at any rate this curious pseudo-science of winning by skill at games of pure chance will last our time, if not longer.

On some tables there were as much as three or four thousand gold ounces. This struck us the more because we had often tried to get gold coin for our own use, instead of the silver dollars, the general currency of the country, of which twenty pounds' worth to carry home on a hot day was enough to break one's heart. We often tried to get gold, but the answer was always that what little there was in the country was in the hands of the gamblers, whose operations could not be worked on a large scale without it.

The prevalence of mining, as a means of getting wealth, has contributed greatly to make the love of gambling an important part of the national character. Silver-mining in the old times was a most hazardous speculation, and people engaged in it used to make and lose great fortunes a dozen times in their lives. The miners worked not on fixed wages, but for a share of the produce, and so every man became a gambler on his own account. To a great extent the same evils prevail now, but two things have tended to lessen them. Poor ores are now worked profitably which used to be neglected by the miners; and, as these ores occur in almost inexhaustible ma.s.ses, their mining is a much less speculative affair than the old system of mining for rich veins.

Moreover, the men are, in some of the largest mines, paid by the day, so that their life has become more regular. In many places, however, the work is still done on shares by the miners, who pa.s.s their lives in alternations of excessive riches and all kinds of extravagance, succeeded by times of extreme poverty.

An acquaintance of ours was telling us one day about the lives of these men. One week, a party of three miners had come upon a very rich bit of ore, and went away from the _raya_, each man with a handkerchief full of dollars. This was on Sat.u.r.day evening. On Monday morning our informant went out for a ride, and on the road he met three dirty haggard-looking men, dressed in some old rags; one of the three came forward, taking off the sort of apology for a hat which he had on, and said, "Good morning, Senor Doctor, would you mind doing us the favour of lending us half a dollar to get something to eat?" They were the three successful miners; and when, a few days afterwards, the man who had asked for the money came back to return it, the Doctor inquired what had happened.

It seemed that the three, as soon as they had received their money on Sat.u.r.day, got a lift to the nearest town, and there rigged themselves out with new clothes, silver b.u.t.tons, five-pound serapes, and a horse for each, with magnificent silver mountings to the saddle and spurs.

Here they have dinner, and lots of pulque, and swagger about outside the door, smoking cigarettes. There, quite by chance, an acquaintance meets them, and admires the horses, but would like to see their paces tried a little outside the town. So they pace and gallop along for half a mile or so; when, also quite accidentally, they find two men sitting outside a rancho, playing at cards. The two men--strangely enough--are old acquaintances of the curious friend, and they produce a bowl of cool pulque from within, which our miners find quite refres.h.i.+ng after the ride. Thereupon they sit down to have a little game at _monte_, then more pulque, then more cards; and when they awake the next morning, they find themselves possessed of a suit of old rags, with no money in the pockets. They had dim recollections of losing--first money, then horses, and lastly clothes, the night before; but--as they were informed by the old woman, who was the only occupant of the place besides themselves--their friends had been obliged to go away on urgent business, and could not be so impolite as to disturb them. So they walked back to the mines, ragged and hungry, and borrowed the doctor's half-dollar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEATHER SANDALS, WORN BY THE NATIVE INDIANS.]

CHAPTER X.

TEZCUCO. MIRAFLORES. POPOCATEPETL. CHOLULA.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALKING AND RIDING COSTUMES IN MEXICO. _(After Nebel.)_]

The wet season was fast coming on when we left Mexico for the last time. We had to pa.s.s through Vera Cruz, where the rain and the yellow fever generally set in together; so that to stay longer would have been too great a risk.

Our first stage was to Tezcuco, across the lake in a canoe, just as we had been before. We noticed on our way to the canoes, a church, apparently from one to two centuries old, with the following doggerel inscription in huge letters over the portico, which shows that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is by no means a recent inst.i.tution in Mexico:

_Antes de entrar afirma con tu vida, S. Maria fue sin pecado concebida:_

Which may be translated into verse of equal quality,

_Confess on thy life before coming in, That blessed Saint Mary was conceived without sin._

Nothing particular happened on our journey, except that a well-dressed Mexican turned up at the landing-place, wanting a pa.s.sage, and as we had taken a canoe for ourselves, we offered to let him come with us. He was a well-bred young man, speaking one or two languages besides his own; and he presently informed us that he was going on a visit to a rich old lady at Tezcuco, whose name was Dona Maria Lopez, or something of the kind. When we drove away from the other end of the lake, towards Tezcuco, we took him as far as the road leading to the old lady's house; when he rather astonished us by hinting that he should like to go on with us to the Casa Grande, and could walk back. At the same time, it struck us that the youth, though so well dressed, had no luggage; and we began to understand the queer expression of the coachman's face when he saw him get into the carriage with us. So we stopped at the corner of the road, and the young gentleman had to get out.

At the Casa Grande, our friends laughed at us immensely when we told them of the incident, and offered us twenty to one that he would come to ask for money within twenty-four hours. He came the same evening, and brought a wonderful story about his pa.s.sport not being _en regle_, and that unless we could lend him ten dollars to bribe the police, he should be in a dreadful sc.r.a.pe. We referred him to the master of the house, who said something to him which caused him to depart precipitately, and we never saw him again; but we heard afterwards that he had been to the other foreigners in the neighbourhood with various histories. We made more enquiries about him in the town, and it appeared that his expedition to Tezcuco was improvised when he saw us going down to the boat, and of course the visit to the rich old lady was purely imaginary. Now this youth was not more than eighteen, and looked and spoke like a gentleman. They say that the cla.s.s he belonged to is to be counted rather by thousands than by hundreds in Mexico.

They are the children of white Creoles, or nearly white mestizos; they get a superficial education and the art of dressing, and with this slender capital go out into the world to live by their wits, until they get a government appointment or set up as political adventurers, and so have a chance of helping themselves out of the public purse, which is naturally easier and more profitable than mere sponging upon individuals. One gets to understand the course of Mexican affairs much better by knowing what sort of raw material the politicians are recruited from.

We saw some good things in a small collection of antiquities, on this second visit to Tezcuco. Among them was a nude female figure in alabaster, four or five feet high, and--comparatively speaking--of high artistic merit. Such figures are not common in Mexico, and they are supposed to represent the Aztec Venus, who was called _Tlazolteocihua_, "G.o.ddess of Pleasure." A figure, laboriously cut in hard stone, representing a man wearing a jackal's head as a mask, was supposed to be a figurative representation of the celebrated king of Tezcuco, _Nezahualcoyotl_, "hungry jackal," of whom Mexican history relates that he walked about the streets of his capital in disguise, after the manner of the Caliph in the Arabian Nights. The explanation is plausible, but I think not correct. The _coyote_ or jackal was a sacred animal among the Aztecs, as the Anubis-jackal was among the Egyptians.

Humboldt found in Mexico the tomb of a coyote, which had been carefully interred with an earthen vase, and a number of the little cast-bronze bells which I noticed in the last chapter. The Mexicans used actually to make a kind of fetish--or charm--of a jackal's skin, prepared in a peculiar way, and called by the same name, _nezahualcoyotl_, and very likely they do so still. From this fetish the king's name was, no doubt, borrowed; and it is not improbable that the whole story of the king's walking in disguise may have grown up out of his name being the same as that of the figure we saw, m.u.f.fled up in a jackal's skin.

It is curious that the jackal, or the human figure in a jackal-mask, should have been an object of superst.i.tious veneration both in Mexico and in Egypt. This, the extraordinary serpent-crown of Xochicalco, and the pyramids, are the three most striking resemblances to be found between the two countries; all probably accidental, but not the less noteworthy on that account.

The collection contained a number of spherical beads in green jade, highly polished, and some as large as pigeon's eggs. They were found in an alabaster box, of such elaborate and beautiful workmans.h.i.+p that the owner deemed it worthy to be presented as a sort of peace-offering to the wife of President Santa Ana.

The word _coyotl_ in the name of the Tezcucan king is the present word _coyote_--a jackal. Though unknown in English, it has pa.s.sed, with several Spanish words, into what we may call the American dialect of our language. Prairie-hunters and Californians have introduced several other words in this way, such as _ranch_, _gulch, corral_, &c.

The word _lariat_ one is constantly meeting with in books about American prairies. A horse-rope, or a lazo, is called in Spanish _reata_; and, by absorbing the article, _la reata_ is made into lariat, just as such words as _alligator_, _alcove_, and _pyramid_ were formed.

The flexible leather riding-whip or _cuarta_ is apparently the _quirt_ that some American politicians use in arguing with their opponents.

Our last day at Tezcuco was spent in packing up antiquities to be sent to England, the express orders of the Government against such exportation to the contrary notwithstanding. Next morning we rode off to Miraflores, pa.s.sing on our way the curious stratum of alluvial soil containing pottery, &c., which I have described already. Miraflores is a cotton-factory, in the opening of a picturesque gorge just at the edge of the plain of Mexico. The machinery is American, for the mill dates from the time when it was considered expedient to prohibit the exportation of cotton-mill machinery from England; and having begun with American work, it naturally suits them to go on with it. It is driven by a great Barker's mill, which works in a sort of well, having an outlet into the valley, and roars as though it would tear the place down. It is not common to see this kind of machine working on a large scale; but here, with a great fall of water, it does very well.

Otherwise the place was like an ordinary cotton-factory, and one cannot be surprised at people thinking that such establishments are a source of prosperity to the country. They see a population hard at work and getting good wages, masters making great profits, and no end of bales going off to town; and do not consider that half the price of the cloth is wasted, and that the protection-duty sets the people to work which they cannot do to advantage, while it takes them away from occupations which their country is fit for.

Next morning took us to Amecameca, a town in a little plain at the foot of Popocatepetl, whose snow-covered top towers high up in the clouds, like Mont Blanc over Sallanches. We had at one time cherished hopes of getting to the top of this grand volcano, but had heard such frightful reports of difficulties and dangers that we had concluded not to do more than look at it from a distance, the more especially as there had been a heavy fall of snow upon it a day or two before. We presented our letter to the Spaniard who kept the great shop at Amecameca, and asked him, casually, about the mountain. He a.s.sured us that the surface of the snow would be frozen over, and that instead of being a disadvantage the fall of snow was in our favour, for it was easier to climb over frozen snow than up a loose heap of volcanic ashes. So we sent for the guide, a big man, who used to manage the sulphur-workings in the crater until that undertaking was given up. He set to work to get things ready for the expedition, and we strolled out for a walk.

Close by the town is a "sacred mount," with little stations, and on one day in the year numbers of pilgrims come to visit the place. Near the top, the Indian lad who came with us showed us the mouth of a cavern, which leads by subterranean pa.s.sages under the sea to Rome--as caverns not unfrequently do in Roman Catholic countries! What was more worth noticing was that here there was a cypress-tree, covered with votive offerings, like the great ahuchuete in the valley above Chalma; so that it is likely that the place was sacred long before chapels and stations were built upon it. Our guide told us that whenever a man touched the tree, all feeling of weariness left him. How characteristic this superst.i.tion is of a nation of carriers of burdens!

In the afternoon we started--ourselves, our guide, and an Indian to carry cloaks, &c. up the mountain. We soon left the cultivated region, and entered upon the pine-forest, which we never left during our afternoon journey. One of the first showers of the rainy season came down upon us as we rode through the forest. It only lasted half an hour, but it was a deluge. In a shower of the same kind at Tezcuco, a day or two before, rain to the amount of 1-1/10 inches fell in the hour. By dusk we reached the highest habitation in North America, the place where the sulphur used to be sublimed from the pumice brought down from the crater. This place was shut up, for the undertaking has been abandoned; but in a _rancho_ close by we found some Indian women and children, and there we took up our quarters. The _rancho_ was a circular hut, built and thatched with reeds, though in the midst of a pine-forest; and presently a smart shower began, which came in upon us as though the roof had been a sieve.

The Indian women were kneeling all the evening round the wood-fire in the centre of the hut, baking _tortillas_ and boiling beans and coffee in earthen pots. The wood was green, and the place was full of suffocating smoke, except within eighteen inches of the ground, where lay a stratum of purer air. We were obliged to lie down at once, upon mats and serapes, for we could not exist in the smoke; and as often as we raised ourselves into a sitting posture, we had to dive down again, half suffocated. The line of demarcation was so accurately drawn that it was like the Grotto del Cane, only reversed.

After a primitive supper in earthen bowls, we lay round the fire, listening to the talk of our men and the Indian women. It was mostly about adventures with wolves, and about the sulphur-workings, now discontinued. The weather had cleared, and as we lay we could see the stars s.h.i.+ning in through the roof. About three in the morning I awoke, feeling bruised all over, as was natural after sleeping on a mat on the ground. Moreover, the fire had gone out, and it was horribly cold, as well it might be at 13,000 feet above the sea. I shook some one up to make up the fire, and went out into the open air. It was nearly full moon; but the moonlight was very different from what we can see in England, even on the clearest nights. On the plateau of Mexico, the rarity and dryness of the air are such that distant objects are seen far more distinctly than at the level of the sea, and the European traveller's measurements of distance by the eye are always too small.

The sunlight and moonlight, for the same reason, are more intense than at lower levels. Here, at about the same elevation as the top of the Jungfrau, the effect was far more striking, and I shall never forget the brilliant flood of light that illuminated that grand scene. Far down below I could see the plain, with houses and fields dimly visible.

At the bottom of the slope began the dark pine-forest, which enveloped the mountains up to the level at which I stood, and there broke into an uneven line, with straggling patches running up a few hundred feet higher in sheltered crevices. Above the forest came a region of bare volcanic sand, and then began the snow. The highest peak no longer looked steep and pointed as from below, but seemed to rise from the darker line of sand in a gentle swelling curve up into the sky. There did not seem to be a speck or a wrinkle on this smooth snowy dome, the brilliant whiteness of which contrasted so wonderfully with the dark pine-forest below.

About seven in the morning we started on horseback, rode up across the sandy district, and entered upon the snow. After we left the pines, small bushes and tufts of coa.r.s.e Alpine gra.s.s succeeded. Where rocks of basaltic lava stood out from the heaps of crumbling ashes, after the gra.s.s had ceased, lichens--the occupants of the highest zone--were still to be seen. Before we reached the snow, we were in the midst of utter desolation, where no sign of life was visible. From this point we sent back the horses, and started for the ascent of the cone. On our yesterday's ride we had cut young pine-trees in the forest, for alpenstocks; and we tied silk handkerchiefs completely over our faces, to keep off the glare of the sun. Our guide did the same; but the Indian, who had been many times before up to the crater to get sulphur, had brought no protection for his face. We marched in a line, the guide first, sounding the depth of the snow with his pole, and keeping as nearly as he could along ridges just covered with snow, where we did not sink far. It was from the lower part of the snow that we began to understand the magnificent proportions of Iztaccihuatl--the "White Woman," the twin mountain which is connected with Popocatepetl by an immense col, which stretches across below the snow-line. This mountain is not conical like Popocatepetl, but its shoulders are broader, and break into grand peaks, like some of the _Dents_ of Switzerland, and it has no crater.[22] Indeed, the two mountains, joined together like Siamese twins, look as though they had been set up, side by side, to ill.u.s.trate the two contending theories of the formation of volcanos.

Von Buch and Humboldt might have made Iztaccihuatl on the "upheaval theory," by a force pus.h.i.+ng up from below, without breaking through the crust to form a crater; while Poulett Scrope was building Popocatepetl on the "acc.u.mulation theory," by throwing up lava and volcanic ashes out of an open vent, until he had formed a conical heap some five thousand feet high, with a great crater at the top.

As we toiled slowly up the snow, we took off our veils from time to time, to look more clearly about us. The glare of the sun upon the snow was dazzling, and its intense whiteness contrasted wonderfully with the cloudless dark indigo-blue of the sky. Between twelve and one we reached the edge of the crater, 17,884 feet above the sea. The ridge upon which we stood was only a few feet wide, and covered with snow; but it seemed that there was still heat enough to keep the crater itself clear, for none lay on the bottom, or in clefts on the steep sides.

The crater was oval, full a mile in its longest diameter, and perhaps 700 to 800 feet in depth; and its almost perpendicular walls of basaltic lava are covered with red and yellow patches of sublimed sulphur. We climbed a little way down into it to get protection from the wind, but to descend further una.s.sisted was not possible, so we sat there, with our legs dangling down into the abyss. Part of the _malacate_, or winder, used by the Indians in descending, was still there; but it was not complete, and even if it had been, so many months had elapsed since it was last used that we should not have cared to try it. It consisted of a rope of hide, descending into the bottom of the crater in a slanting direction; and the sulphur-collectors were lowered and drawn up it by a windla.s.s, in a basket to which another rope was attached. A few years back, the volcano used to send up showers of ashes, and even large stones; but now it has sunk to the condition of a mere _solfatara_, sending out, from two crevices in the floor, great volumes of sulphurous acid and steam, with a loud roaring noise. The sulphur-working merely consisted in looking for places where the pumice-stone was fully impregnated with sulphur, and breaking out pieces, which were hauled up in the basket. The chief risk which the labourers ran was from the terrific snow-storms, which come on suddenly and without the slightest notice. Men at work collecting sulphur have once or twice been caught by such storms in parts of the crater at a distance from the rope, and buried in the snow.

The appearance of the "White Woman," but little lower than the point where we stood, was very grand, but all other objects looked small. The two great plains of Mexico and Puebla, with their lakes and towns, were laid out like a map; and the ranges of mountains which hem them in made them look like Roman encampments surrounded by earthworks. Even now that the lakes have shrunk to a fraction of their former size, we could see the fitness of the name given in old times to the Valley of Mexico, _Anahuac_, that is, "By the Water-side." The peaks of Orizaba and Perote were conspicuous to the east; to the north lay the silver-mountains of Pachuca; and to the south-west a darker shade of green indicated the forests and plantations of the _tierra caliente_, below Cuernavaca.

It was a novel sensation to be at an alt.i.tude where the barometer stands at 15-1/2 inches, so that the pressure on our lungs was hardly more than one-half what we are accustomed to in England; but we did not experience much inconvenience from it. The last thousand feet or so had been very hard work, and we were obliged to stop every few steps, but on the comparatively level edge of the crater we felt no difficulty in moving about.

_Popocatepetl_ means "Smoking Mountain." The Indians naturally enough considered it to be the abode of evil spirits, and told Cortes and his companions that they could never reach the top. One of the Spaniards, Diego Ordaz, tried to climb to the summit, and got as far as the snow; whereupon he returned, and got permission to put a burning mountain in his coat of arms, in commemoration of the exploit! If, as he declared, a high wind was blowing, and showers of ashes falling, his turning back was excusable, though his bragging was not. He seems to have afterwards told Bernal Diaz that he got to the top, which we know, by Cortes'

letters to Spain, was not true. A few years later, Francesco Montano went up, and was lowered into the crater to get sulphur. When Humboldt relates the story, in his _New Spain_, he seems incredulous about this; but since the _Essai Politique_ was written the same thing has been regularly done by the Indians, as the merest matter of business, until the crater has been fairly worked out.

We took our last look at Mexico from the ridge of the crater, and, descending twenty feet at a stride, soon reached the bottom of the cone. As far as we could see, the substance of the hill seemed to be of basaltic lava, which was mostly covered with the _lapilli_ which I have spoken of before as ashes and volcanic sand. Even before we reached the pine-forest there was evidence of the action of water, which had covered the slope of the mountain with beds of thick compact tufa, composed of these lapilli mixed with fragments of lava. The water-courses had cut deep channels through these beds, and down into the rock below; so that the streams from the melted snow rushed down between walls of lava, in which traces of columnar structure were observable.

The snow we had travelled over was sometimes dry and powdery, and sometimes hard and compact. There were no glaciers, and no glacier-ice, properly so called. It never rains at this elevation; and, though evaporation goes on rapidly with half the pressure taken off the air, and a great increase in the intensity of the sun's rays, the snow either pa.s.ses directly into vapour, or carries the water off instantaneously, as it is formed. Only so much water seems to be produced and re-frozen as suffices to make the snow hard, and in some favourable places near the rocks to form lumps of ice, and some of those great icicles which the Spaniards brought down from the mountain on their first expedition, so greatly astonis.h.i.+ng their companions.

When we reached the rancho we thought of pa.s.sing another night there; but the Indians who had gone down to the valley for corn had not returned, and everything was eaten up except beans, which are all very well as accessories to dinner, but our English digestions could not stand living upon them; so we started at once for San Nicolas de los Ranchos. Our ride was down a deep ravine, by the side of a mountain-torrent coming down from the snows of Popocatepetl; and, when we stopped now and then to look behind us, we had one of the grandest views which I have ever witnessed. The elements of the picture were simple enough. A deep gorge at our feet, with a fierce torrent rus.h.i.+ng down it, dark pine-trees all round us, and above us--on either side--a snow-covered mountain towering up into the sky. We were just in the track of the Spanish invaders, who crossed most likely by this very road between the two volcanos; and they record the amazement which they felt that in the tropics snow should be unmelted upon the mountains.

A few hours riding down the steep descent, and we were in the flat plain of Puebla. There were our two mountains behind us, but now they looked as we had so often seen them before from a distance. The power of realizing their size was gone, and with it most of their grandeur and beauty. Nothing was left us but a vivid recollection of the wonderful scenes that were before us a few hours ago, impressions not likely to be ever effaced from our minds, where the picture of the great snowy cone seen in the bright moonlight, and the descent between the mountains, remain indelibly impressed as the types of all that is most grand and impressive in the scenery of lofty mountains.

We slept at San Nicolas de los Ranches, "St. Nicholas of the huts,"

where the shopkeeper, to whom we had a letter, insisted upon turning out of his own room for us, and treated us like princes. The reason of our often being provided with letters to the shopkeepers in small places, was, that they are the only people who have houses fit for entertaining travellers. Many of them are very rich, and in the United States they would call themselves merchants. Next morning our Indian carrier, who had ascended the mountain without a veil, was brought in by our guide, a pitiful object. All the skin of his face was peeling off, and his eyes were frightfully inflamed, so that he was all but blind, and had to be led about. Fortunately, this blindness only lasts for a time, and no doubt he got well in a few days.