myself off
my mule, and stretching my arms and legs, which were stiffened by a
long ride.

It _was_ a fairish place, to all appearances--a snug ravine, well
shaded by mahogany-trees, the ground covered with the luxuriant
vegetation of that tropical region, a little stream bubbling and
leaping and dashing down one of the high rocks that flanked the
hollow, and rippling away through the tall fern towards the rear of
the spot where we had halted, at the distance of a hundred yards from
which the ground was low and shelving.

"A capital place this for our bivouac!"

My companion nodded. As to our lazy Mexican _arrieros_ and servants,
they said nothing, but began making arrangements for passing the
night. Curse the fellows! If they had seen us preparing to lie down in
a swamp, cheek by jowl with an alligator, I believe they would not
have offered a word of remonstrance. Those Mexican half-breeds, half
Indian half Spaniard, with sometimes a dash of the Negro, are
themselves so little pervious to the dangers and evils of their soil
and climate, that they never seem to remember that Yankee flesh and
blood may be rather more susceptible; that niguas[25] and musquittoes,
and _vomito prieto_, as they call their infernal fever, are no trifles
to encounter; without mentioning the snakes, and scorpions, and
alligators, and other creatures of the kind, which infest their
strange, wild, unnatural, and yet beautiful country.

[25] The nigua is a small but very dangerous insect which
fixes itself in the feet, bores holes in the skin, and lays
its eggs there. These, if not extracted, (which extraction by
the by is a most painful operation) cause first an intolerable
itching, and subsequently sores and ulcers of a sufficiently
serious nature to entail the loss of the feet.

I had come to Mexico in company with Jonathan Rowley, a youth of
Virginian raising, six and twenty years of age, six feet two in his
stockings, with the limbs of a Hercules and shoulders like the side of
a house. It was towards the close of 1824; and the recent emancipation
of Mexico from the Spanish yoke, and its self-formation into a
republic, had given it a new and strong interest to us Americans. We
had been told much, too, of the beauty of the country--but in this we
were at first rather disappointed; and we reached the capital without
having seen any thing, except some parts of the province of Vera Cruz,
that could justify the extrav