X.
INTO PORT.
Sunrise.—Villa de Gomez Firias.—A lost American found.—Flowering Palms.—An unpleasant Reminder.—A charming Park.—Agua Nueva.—La Encantada.—La Angostura.— Battlemented Mountains.—Buena Vista.—The Battlefield.—The Result.—Why.—Saltillo.—Alameda.—Friends.
The four days' trip across the wilderness ocean is completed. The pleasant harbor is made; the perils by land are at an end. True, four days' staging yet remain, or ere the country is left, and the robbers, if such there be. And as a vessel has been wrecked in sight of its port, and coaches have been robbed within two miles of Mexico, there are plenty of chances yet to experience all that is threatened and feared. But the chief perils are past, and the chief weariness; and it is to be hoped none that follow will exceed those that have gone before. Our night in a rancho was without excitement. "I laid me down in peace and slept. I awaked, for Thou sustained me."
It was not much after midnight when the men sleeping on the ground at the door of our biggin began to bestir themselves; at a little after one we were all up, and at two off, one party of two for the South, one of one for the North. The coach had several rent windows, and let in the cold air full freely. But as the air was not very cold, the shawl sufficed for a protector, and I tossed and slept till morning broke. The same level was before me, shut in by the same hills. The light grew rosy in midheavens, then on the western ridge, and then the blaze boiled and steamed up the east, and all was done.
It was a long pull through the unchanging fields of stunted mesquite and palm, varied by equally stunted castor-oil bean, whose
