We loaded our horses with the bulbs of such orchids as were still in the dry state, and would travel safely to Europe.  Sometimes we climbed into the trees for promising specimens, but oftener contented ourselves with tearing them from the branches as we rode below.  When saddle-bags and pockets were full, we were for a time at fault, for there seemed no place for new treasures, when suddenly I remembered a pair of old trousers.  We tied up the ends of the legs, which we filled with orchids; and the garment travelled to Jalapa sitting in its natural position across my saddle, to the amazement of such Mexican society as we met.  The contents of the two pendant legs are now producing splendid flowers in several English hothouses.

By evening we reached the Junta, a place where the great ravine was joined by a smaller one, and a long slanting descent brought us to the edge of the river.  There was a ferry here, consisting of a raft of logs which the Indian ferryman hauled across along a stout rope.  The horses were attached to the raft by their halters, and so swam across.  On the point of land between the two rivers the Indians had their huts, and there we spent the night.  We chose the fattest guajalote of the turkey-pen, and in ten minutes he was simmering in the great earthen pot over the fire, having been cut into many pieces for convenience of cooking, and the women were busy grinding Indian corn to be patted out into tortillas.  While supper was getting ready, and Mr. Christy’s day’s collection of plants was being pressed (the country we had been passing through is so rich that the new specimens gathered that day filled several quires of paper), we had a good deal of talk with the brown people, who could all speak a little Spanish.  Some years before, the two old people had settled there, and set up the ferry.  Besides this, they made nets and caught much fish in the river, and cultivated the little piece of ground which formed the point of the promontory.  While their descendants went no further than grandchildren the colony had done very well; but now great-grandchildren had begun to arrive, and they would soon have to divide, and form a settlement up in the woods across the river, or upon some patch of ground at the bottom of one of the barrancas.

We were interested in studying the home-life of these people, so different from what we are accustomed to among our peasants of Northern Europe, whose hard continuous labour is quite unknown here.  For the men, an occasional pull at the balsas (the rafts of the ferry), a little fishing, and now and then—­when they are in the humour for it—­ a little digging in the garden-ground with a wooden spade, or dibbling with a pointed stick.  The women have a harder life of it, with the eternal grinding and cooking, cotton-spinning, mat-weaving, and tending of the crowds of babies.  Still it is an easy lazy life, without much trouble for to-day or care for to-morrow.  When the simple occupations of the