this height we emerged from the woods, to find
ourselves on a most extensive plain, very properly called, in the
Spanish, _La Mesa_--the table. Here we encountered the wagon-road
leading from the capital to our destination and for a long distance we
followed it. After we left _La Mesa_ it was simply horrible, and all my
attention became absorbed in self.

By no means is any one to presume that my mule and I had become
reconciled by our lengthened companionship. Discomfort amounting to
positive agony had taught me to adopt more attitudes, graceful or
ungraceful, than all the combined systems of Delsarte and other physical
culturists could possibly suggest.

Every muscle in my body had been so frequently called into requisition
that to use any one almost drew forth an involuntary scream. In various
places the skin had been worn away by constant friction of the clothing
or saddle, leaving highly sensitive sores, even my gauntlets reducing my
wrists to such a state.

Words cannot express what I suffered. The torture had been of a less
acute kind while we were riding over comparatively level roads, but here
we were going "up hill and down dale" again, and how I was to bear it I
could not see.

I tried to be brave, and I think rarely, if ever, a complaint passed my
lips, but during that last day I more than once nearly committed suicide
through sheer physical exhaustion.

My stock of reserved strength proved to be far greater than I had ever
reason to believe it, and demand for more endurance was always met.

When my mule had some particularly difficult obstacle to surmount, she
had a way of approaching it quietly and then suddenly giving a hump that
filled her spine with complex curves and a burden, unless care were
exercised, with compound fractures. In order to insure one's safety it
is absolutely necessary to preserve an exact equilibrium directly over
the said spine in a line running from the point midway between her ears
to her tail. This is at times so gigantic a task that it is no wonder a
temporary oblivion to bodily sensation is induced.

Poor mule! In moments when I could summon up any spare sympathy, I
lavished it upon her. She seemed to be tired too.

Finally, when going down steep ravines, she ceased to lower herself and
me gently from one foothold to the next, but acquired a habit of
thumping down in a reckless way, giving a sort of grunt, which
sometimes, for the life of me, I could not help accompan