The road was fearfully parched and dry; on every side fathomless precipices were to be seen in the sides of the mountains, and rocks appeared ready to fall on the heads of the travelers. To regain the chief road it was necessary to cross a portion of these muontains at a height of five thousand four hundred feet, near a rock known by the Indians as the "smoking rock," for it still exhibited signs of recent volcanic action. Dark chasms yawned on every side.
Since the last journey of the seaman Jose some fresh outbreaks had completely changed the appearance of these solitudes, so that he could not recognize them ; thus he completely lost himself among the inaccessible cliffs. He stopped to listen to some rumbling sounds which came issuing forth here and there from the cliffs.
"I can do no more!" at length cried José, sinking to the ground with fatigue.
"Push on!" cried Martinez with feverish impatience.
Some claps of thunder reverberated amid the gorges of Popocatepetl. "Now may Satan take me, for I may count myself among the lost souls!"
"Rise up and push on," roughly exclaimed Martinez.
He compelled José to get up, and the sailor stumbled forward. "And not a human being to guide us," murmured José.
"So much the better," observed the lieutenant gruffly as he moved forward.
"You do not know, then, that every year a thousand murders are committed in Mexico, and how many in the environs nobody can calculate!" said José.
"So much the better," answered Martinez.
Large drops of rain began to fall on the rocks around them, brightened by the last fading light in the sky.
"The points we lately saw so clearly around us, where are they now?" asked the lieutenant.
"Mexico is on the left, Puebla on the right," replied José, "if we could see anything, but nothing can now be distinguished."
It became fearfully dark. "Before us should be the mountain of Icetacihualt, and in the ravine at its base a good road; but what if we should not reach it!" "Push on!" cried the lieutenant.
The thunder claps were now repeated with extreme
