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accommodations at the ruins. Our greatest difficulty was about seats.
All contrived to be provided for, however, except Don Simon, who
finally, as it was an extreme case, went into the church and brought
out the great confessional chair.

Breakfast over, the doctor's patient was brought forward. He was not
consulted on the subject of the operation, and had no wish of his own
about it, but did as his master ordered him. At the moment of
beginning, Doctor Cabot asked for a bed. He had not thought of asking
for it before, supposing it would be ready at a moment's notice; but he
might almost as well have asked for a steamboat or a locomotive engine.
Who ever thought of wanting a bed at Uxmal? was the general feeling of
the Indians. They were all born in hammocks, and expected to die in
them, and who wanted a bed when he could get a hammock? A bed, however
(which means a bedstead), was indispensable, and the Indians dispersed
in search, returning, after a long absence, with tidings that they had
heard of one on the hacienda, but it had been taken apart, and the
pieces were in use for other purposes. They were sent off again, and at
length we received notice that the bed was coming, and presently it
appeared advancing through the gate of the cattleyard in the shape of a
bundle of poles on the shoulder of an Indian. For purposes of immediate
use, they might as well hare been on the tree that produced them, but,
after a while, they were put together, and made a bedstead that would
have astonished a city cabinet-maker.

In the mean time the patient was looking on, perhaps with somewhat the
feeling of a man superintending the making of his own coffin. The
disease was in his right leg, which was almost as thick as his body,
covered with ulcers, and the distended veins stood out like whipcords.
Doctor Cabot considered it necessary to cut two veins. The Indian stood
up, resting the whole weight of his body on the diseased leg, so as to
bring them out to the fullest, and supporting himself by leaning with
his hands on a bench. One vein was cut, the wound bound up, and then
the operation was performed on the other by thrusting a stout pin into
the flesh under the vein, and bringing it out on the other side, then
winding a thread round the protruding head and point, and leaving the
pin to cut its way through the vein and fester out. The leg was then
bound tight, and the Indian laid upon the bed. During the whole time
not a muscle o