hey would
have besought Providence to afford them, to accomplish the hazardous
enterprise they had so daringly projected and commenced.

Unfortunately for the public, the Senor's journal, fragmentary
throughout, is especially meagre concerning the incidents of travel
between the capital of Vera Paz and Santa Cruz del Quiche. At this
period he appears to have left the task of recording them almost
entirely to his two friends, whose memoranda, in all probability, are
forever lost. Some of those incidents appear, even from his brief
minutes of them, to have been of the most imminent and critical
importance. Thus under the date of February 2nd, 1849, he says, "on the
bank of a branch of the Salamo, attacked in the night by about thirty
Indian robbers, several of whom had fire-arms. Sr. Hammond, sitting
within the light of the fire, was severely wounded through the left
shoulder; they had followed us from the hacienda, six leagues, passed us
to the north and lay in ambush; killed four, wounded three; of the rest
saw no more; poor Juan, shot through the body, died this morning; lost
two mules."

After this, there is nothing written until the 16th, when they had
arrived at a place called San Jose, where he says, "Good beef and fowls;
Sr. Huertis much better; Sr. Hammond very low in intermittent fever;
fresh mules and good ones." Next on the 5th of March, at the Indian
village of Axitzel, is written, "Detained here five days; Hammond,
strong and headstrong. Agree with Huertis that, to be safe, we must wait
with patience the return of the good Cura." Slight and tantalizing
memoranda of this kind occur, irregularly, until April 3rd, when we find
the party safely arrived at Quiche, and comfortably accommodated in a
convent. The jovial Padre, already often mentioned, who maybe regarded
as the unconscious father of the expedition, had become helplessly, if
not hopelessly, dropsical, and lost much of his wanted jocosity. He
declared, however, that Senor Velasquez's description of the ruins
explored the previous summer, recalling as it did his own profoundly
impressed recollection of them, when he walked through their desolate
avenues and deserted palaces; and corroborating as it did, in every
particular, his own reiterated account of them, which he had often
bestowed upon incredulous and unworthy ears, would "act like _cannabis_
upon his bladder," as it already had upon his eyes; and if he could but
live to see the description in p