was so muddy there was little chance of recovering their bodies. Paddling up the stream a short distance, we came to a fence of logs and reeds, through which we made a hole large enough to push the canoe and then closed it up after us. These fences are intended to keep the fish which swarm up into the lagoons during the rains from passing back into the river. By the end of March both stream and lagoon would be dried up into a number of rapidly dwindling pools and the fish would be easily captured. Above the fish-fence the stream was only a few yards wide, and here our canoe-man began to cast his net: in a quarter of an hour we had about two hundred mountain mullet, weighing from a quarter to half a pound each, in the bottom of the canoe, well covered over with reeds to keep them from the sun. As we knew that the lagoon could not be far off, we made an effort to reach it, but the waterway was so narrow that it was not easy to work the canoe; the banks were high and muddy and overshadowed by trees, and at almost every turn in the stream a startled alligator rolled off the bank with a splash and dived down under us. At last the water shallowed and we stuck fast so leaving the canoe we scrambled through a narrow belt of scrub and gained a view over the broad sheet of shallow water, whence great flocks of wading-birds disturbed at their morning meal rose with discordant cries into the air.
At last the day came that we were able to make a start for Palenque: Don Adolfo had lent us horses for ourselves, and four or five Wretched pack-mules carried part of the baggage. Luckily for us some half-dozen Indians from the Sierra had just paid their yearly visit to Monte Cristo to sell their cargos of wild cacao and buy machetes and a supply of salt, and, as their return loads were not heavy, after much persuasion they agreed to carry some of our things, and it was to their care that we had to confide our surveying instruments and such articles as could not safely be put on a mule's back. As the Indians had all been hopelessly drunk the night before, we did not get off very early, although our efforts to start commenced before dawn, and what with bad mules, sulky muleteers, and half-druuken Indians we had a hard day of it. The track was in a bad state from recent rains, and a long detour had to be made in order to avoid some deep mud-holes. Towards evening we found ourselves in a large savannah far away from Palenque, with the pack-mules dead-beat and the Indians stopping and putting down their loads whenever one's back was turned. At last we could get them no further, and had to leave them to camp by themselves while we pushed on in the moonlight, trusting that the path we were following would lead us to the cattle-rancho which we believed to be on ahead of us. Cattle-tracks ran in all directions, and we never knew if we were on the right one. At about nine o'clock we saw the glimmer of a light and riding towards it were civilly
