s
we met. The contents of the two pendant legs are now producing splendid
flowers in several English hothouses.

By evening we reached the _Junta_, a place where the great ravine was
joined by a smaller one, and a long slanting descent brought us to the
edge of the river. There was a ferry here, consisting of a raft of logs
which the Indian ferryman hauled across along a stout rope. The horses
were attached to the raft by their halters, and so swam across. On the
point of land between the two rivers the Indians had their huts, and
there we spent the night. We chose the fattest _guajalote_ of the
turkey-pen, and in ten minutes he was simmering in the great earthen
pot over the fire, having been cut into many pieces for convenience of
cooking, and the women were busy grinding Indian corn to be patted out
into tortillas. While supper was getting ready, and Mr. Christy's day's
collection of plants was being pressed (the country we had been passing
through is so rich that the new specimens gathered that day filled
several quires of paper), we had a good deal of talk with the brown
people, who could all speak a little Spanish. Some years before, the
two old people had settled there, and set up the ferry. Besides this,
they made nets and caught much fish in the river, and cultivated the
little piece of ground which formed the point of the promontory. While
their descendants went no further than grandchildren the colony had
done very well; but now great-grandchildren had begun to arrive, and
they would soon have to divide, and form a settlement up in the woods
across the river, or upon some patch of ground at the bottom of one of
the barrancas.

We were interested in studying the home-life of these people, so
different from what we are accustomed to among our peasants of Northern
Europe, whose hard continuous labour is quite unknown here. For the
men, an occasional pull at the _balsas_ (the rafts of the ferry), a
little fishing, and now and then--when they are in the humour for it--
a little digging in the garden-ground with a wooden spade, or dibbling
with a pointed stick. The women have a harder life of it, with the
eternal grinding and cooking, cotton-spinning, mat-weaving, and tending
of the crowds of babies. Still it is an easy lazy life, without much
trouble for to-day or care for to-morrow. When the simple occupations
of the day are finished, the time does not seem to hang heavy upon
their hands. The men lie about, "th