nt colors of the
houses, and the different shades of green of the trees and bushes that
lined the highroad to the capital.

"To the right, as we descend," said Clay, speaking over his shoulder,
"you see a tin house. It is the home of the resident director of the
Olancho Mining Company (Limited), and of his able lieutenants, Mr.
Theodore Langham and Mr. MacWilliams. The building on the extreme left
is the round-house, in which Mr. MacWilliams stores his three
locomotive engines, and in the far middle-distance is Mr. MacWilliams
himself in the act of repairing a water-tank. He is the one in a suit
of blue overalls, and as his language at such times is free, we will
drive rapidly on and not embarrass him. Besides," added the engineer,
with the happy laugh of a boy who had been treated to a holiday, "I am
sure that I am not setting him the example of fixity to duty which he
should expect from his chief."

They passed between high hedges of Spanish bayonet, and came to mud
cabins thatched with palm-leaves, and alive with naked, little
brown-bodied children, who laughed and cheered to them as they passed.

"It's a very beautiful country for the pueblo," was Clay's comment.
"Different parts of the same tree furnish them with food, shelter, and
clothing, and the sun gives them fuel, and the Government changes so
often that they can always dodge the tax-collector."

From the mud cabins they came to more substantial one-story houses of
adobe, with the walls painted in two distinct colors, blue, pink, or
yellow, with red-tiled roofs, and the names with which they had been
christened in bold black letters above the entrances. Then the
carriage rattled over paved streets, and they drove between houses of
two stories painted more decorously in pink and light blue, with
wide-open windows, guarded by heavy bars of finely wrought iron and
ornamented with scrollwork in stucco. The principal streets were given
up to stores and cafes, all wide open to the pavement and protected
from the sun by brilliantly striped awnings, and gay with the national
colors of Olancho in flags and streamers. In front of them sat
officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of Valencia, in white
duck suits and Panama hats, toying with tortoise shell canes, which
could be converted, if the occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo
steel. In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and
ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to