VIII.
MID-OCEAN.
The "Rolling Forties."—Ceral Hard-tack.—Not so Hard.—Mexican Birds.—Smoking-girls.—Laguna Seca.—La Punta.—First Breakfast in an Adobe.—Hacienda of Precita.—The Spanish Bayonet.—Mattejuala.—Birnam Wood marching on Dunsinane.—The first and last Mosquito of Mexico.—Yankee Singing.—Worse threatened.
The point in a journey where you strike the dead neutral centre between the coming and the going is almost always one of intense disagreeableness. Such the ocean wanderer finds the "rolling forties," in "the dead waste and middle of" that tiresome ferriage. I am in the like condition now. I doubt if many would take this trip could they see this room before they start; nor would many cross the ocean if they were treated to a foretaste of that ridge where the waves roll east and west, and the spirits sink like lead in the mighty waters.
The room is in the Casa Diligencias Generales, in the town of Ceral, which contains three thousand human inhabitants. Of course, being the stage-house, it is the best in the place; and it is the best room in the house; since I, being the only passenger, have my pick. Look at it. First look at that muddy water, a tumbler of which that dirty boy has just brought in. A Mississippi boatman could not taste it. It is worse than the Thames after Hood's "Bridge of Sighs" had spanned it.
"Drink of it, lave in it then, if you can."
It stands on a dressing-table that saw paint in spots a century ago, and has hardly seen soap since. Adjoining it is a like white-and-gray wash-stand, its legs inclining inward from the decrepitude of
