and before I could make out what they were after, one of them had landed and knocked poor Chico off the tree with an oar. When I ran towards him, the man made off and I picked up the poor little animal, who lay in my hand as I thought dying, breathing in gasps and with quivers of pain passing through his little body. A dose of brandy and ammonia partly revived him, and a careful examination showed that his forearm was broken near the elbow. Twice was he put under chloroform and attempts were made to set the tiny limb in plaster bandages, but the bandages always slipped off, and after the second attempt the veterinary surgeon, who had been called in, said he could do no more for him. During the first night after the accident, he slept by my side and became restless as soon as I removed my hand from and him; the next day he at last consented to lie still in his own bed and slept for hours together, putting up his head when he awoke to be fed with milk from a spoon. By degrees he began to get about again, and at the end of a fortnight the bones seemed to be firmly knit, and although he has ever since had a stiff joint, it seems to cause him very little inconvenience, and he enjoys the most robust health. He is beautifully clean and his coat is without the smallest trace of scent of any kind, and he is fastidious in his food, delighting in a hot roll at breakfast, and cake with his tea, but scornful of baker's bread. He likes fruit and is especially fond of cherries but he refuses all English nuts and has to be provided with Spanish chestnuts and pecan nuts from America, and these latter he expects to have cracked for him, as he has never yet learned to open a nut himself. He is indeed as charming, gentle, and attractive a pet as one could wish for; but alas he has no respect for the furniture, which shows only too visibly the marks of his teeth.
On the 17th April, having disposed of our mules and bidden farewell to Mr. Price and the tearful Gorgonio, who, faithful to the last, strove to make everything comfortable for our journey, we embarked on the little steamer which plies between Yzabal and Livingston, where we were to take the steamer for New Orleans. The sail down the great lake was devoid of interest until we approached the narrows which separate the Golfo Dulce from the Golfete. Here the castle of San Felipe guards the passage, a ruined seventeenth-century fort of which little remains but the crumbling bastions and a solitary cannon, but around which hangs many a legend of the bold buccaneers who infested the coast during the days of the Spanish dominion. As the steamer threaded its way between the islands which dot the placid waters of the Golfete, we were many times hailed by the occupants of heavily laden canoes, who were on the watch to deliver their cargoes of bananas for conveyance to the ocean steamer. Then the waterway narrowed,
