exhausted after passing thirty hours without food or water. The servants fortunately had provisions with them, and procured some milk from a man who was conveying an ass-load of it to a neighbouring Rancho.
We did not leave San Juan till the morning of the 8th. The vicinity of the town abounds in gardens and fruit-trees, which gave a cheerful air to the scene when viewed from the top of a steep descent on the Mexico side, called La Băjādă de Săn Jūān: it consists of about two leagues of abominable road, covered with loose rocks and stones, and sufficiently dangerous, even on horseback, to make me feel uneasy when coming down it in the morning with the child in my arms. After crossing a river, which runs to the North of the town, (from whence the name, Del Rio,) although not laid down in any map, we breakfasted at the Hacienda de Sāūs, three and a half leagues from San Juan, where all the abundance of the Baxio seemed to commence. We found, in a poor little Rancho, provisions of all kinds; milk and eggs, excellent bread, tortillas of course, with chile for those who liked it, and large plates of frijoles, a sort of black bean, of which the Mexicans make an extremely palatable dish. In an enclosure opposite the Hacienda I found hares in abundance: they got up two at a time in every direction under my feet, and I might have shot fifty, had I wanted them, with as much ease as I did five.
