received at the rancho by some wild-looking vaqueros, half negro, half Indian, who quieted their evil-looking dogs, and carried their hospitality so far as to offer us a share of the big log bench covered with bullock-skins, on which some of their companions were lying asleep; luckily we had our hammocks with us, and, after making some soup, turned in utterly tired out.
About noon the next day we arrived at Santo Domingo, and with some difficulty managed to hire an empty hut—it was hardly worthy of the name of house—as a lodging-place. This sleepy little village of twenty houses lies so far out of the world that it was strange to find the two inhabitants of most importance to be one the son of a Frenchman, the other the son of a Swiss doctor, and the latest addition to the society to be a Corsican, who, although his poverty forced him to live the life of the poorer class of native, had not yet lost all his energy and was wildly excited about some minerals which had been found in the sierra, on which he was building golden hopes of a return in riches to his own country. Alas! the specimens with which he loaded my boxes on my return home proved to be nothing but valueless pyrites, and I fear the sandalled feet of the cheery fellow still tread the grass-grown street of Santo Domingo.
As the track to the ruins was, we were told, entirely overgrown, our first business was to get it cleared, so I made play with a letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Mexico, which recommended me to the attention of all local officers; by this means I managed to secure a few labourers until arrangements could be made with the higher authorities for a regular supply of workmen. My letter to the Governor had already been despatched from Laguna, but as he lived at San Cristóbal, a week's journey distant, it would be still a few days before his answer would reach me; meanwhile a messenger was despatched to the Jefe Politico, who lived nearer and could be reached in three days.
As soon as this matter had been seen to, we made a prospecting journey to the ruins on foot; the distance was about six miles, and for the first half of it the track ran through woodland which from time to time had been cleared for plantations, then we crossed two small savannahs and entered on a heavier forest which envelops the ruins and clothes the sierras above. Half a mile before reaching the ruins we began the ascent of the broken limestone cliffs and slopes which form the scarp of the plateau, or rather the series of terraces, on which the buildings are raised, and we were soon scrambling over mounds of broken masonry, so thickly covered with vegetation that it was with difficulty they could be distinguished from the rocky ground around us. As yet, no buildings had been in sight, when all of a sudden we
