rint, so as to silence all gainsayers,
he had no doubt it would completely cure him, and add many years to his
life. He persisted in his story of the unknown city in the Candone
wilderness, as seen by himself, nearly forty years ago, from the summit
of the sierra; and promised the travellers a letter to his friend, the
Cura of Gueguetenango, requesting him to procure them a guide to the
very spot from whence they could behold it for themselves.

This promise, in the course of a few days, the Senor says, he faithfully
performed, describing from recollection, by the hand of an amanuensis to
whom he dictated, not only the more striking but even minute and
peculiar landmarks for the guidance of the guide. On the 10th of April,
the party, fully recruited in health and energy, set out for
Totonicapan; and thence we trace them by the journal through a
succession of small places to Quezaltenango, where they remained but two
days; and thence through the places called Aguas Calientes, and San
Sebastiano, to Gueguetenango; this portion of their route being
described as one of unprecedented toil, danger, and exhaustion, from its
mountainous character, accidents to men and mules, terrific weather and
loss of provisions. Arrived, however, at length, at the town last named,
which they justly regarded as an eminently critical stage of their
destiny, they found the Cura, and presented him with the letter of
introduction from his friend, the Padre of Quiche. They were somewhat
discouraged on perceiving that the Cura indicated but little confidence
in the accuracy of his old friend's memory, and asked them rather
abruptly, if they thought him really serious in his belief in his
distant vision of an unknown city from the sierra, because, for his own
part, he had always regarded the story as one of Padre's broadest jokes,
and especially since he had never heard of any other person possessing
equal visual powers. "The mountain was high, it is true, but not much
more than half as high as the hyperbolous memory of his reverend friend
had made it, and he much feared that the Padre, in the course of forty
years, had so frequently repeated a picture of his early imagination as
to have, at length, cherished it as a reality." This was said in smooth
and elegant Spanish, but says the Senor, "with an air of dignified
sarcasm upon our credulity, which was far from being agreeable to men
broken down and dispirited, by almost incredible toil, in pursuit