motion, and rather liking it. If only my cousin could have witnessed my
triumph, my happiness would have been complete.

The road lay over a velvety plain, and for a couple of hours we rode on,
the only incident at all exciting, being an effort on my part to leave
my head perched upon a heavy limb of an overhanging tree. This danger
past, no new danger presented itself to disturb our quiet progress, and
toward the end of the afternoon, we rode into _Nacaome_, the little
village where we were to spend the night.

Dismounting at the entrance to an _adobe_ house, with doors standing
hospitably ajar, we were bidden to enter, and were shown into a great
bare room, with a tiled floor, no ceiling except the roof of tiles, and
containing two chairs, two beds, and a table. There were no windows, two
great doors, one on each side of the corner, admitting light and air,
and at one side of the room a smaller door led into another apartment,
for this was a house on an unusual scale.

The native bed is something unique, and perhaps a description of it will
not come amiss. A plain, high, single wooden bedstead, such as we
sometimes see in very old-fashioned farm-houses, first has ropes or
strips of skin drawn over it, upon which is placed a piece of matting,
or in some cases, leather--the latter a sign of luxury.

During the day it presents this appearance, but at night a hard pillow
is added, the native woman wraps herself in a sheet, and lies down on
the matting to sleep as peaceful and dreams as blissful, let us hope, as
her more favored sister who reclines upon a downy couch under a silken
coverlid.

I had no occasion to test the comfort of this bed in its primitive
state, for our servants had brought with them everything that could
render our quarters bearable if there were any foundation upon which to
build.

A hammock was slung up in the room, and I found I had never before
cherished a proper appreciation of one. Even a summer girl, with all the
romantic accessories of "shady nook, babbling brook," and so on, can
form no conception of the soul-satisfying comfort derived from
abandoning oneself to the luxurious embrace of a hammock, after a few
hours' ride on a mule. One friend who had survived the experience I was
just beginning, had warned me not to think death was nigh at the end of
the first day, so I lay there almost vainly trying to convince myself
that these were only natural and ordinary sensations and would not