stuff or of plain white cotton, of two narrow pieces sewed together and quite plain except for a line of bright stitching along the line of juncture.  As among other indian tribes, this cloth was simply wrapped around the figure and held in place by a belt.  The town is famous for its weaving and dyeing; the loom is the simple, primitive device used all through Mexico long before the Conquest.  We were surprised to find that the designs in colored wools are not embroidered upon the finished fabric, but are worked in with bits of worsted during the weaving.

From San Bartolome to Comitan, the road passes over a curious lime deposit, apparently formed by ancient hot waters; it is a porous tufa which gave back a hollow sound under the hoofs of our horses.  It contains moss, leaves, and branches, crusted with lime, and often forms basin terraces, which, while beautiful to see, were peculiarly harsh and rough for our animals.  But the hard, and far more ancient, limestone, onto which we then passed, was quite as bad.  At the very summit of one hill of this we found a cave close by the road; entering it, we penetrated to a distance of perhaps seventy-five feet, finding the roof hung with stalactites and the walls sheeted with stalagmite.  Just after leaving this cave, we met a tramp on foot, ragged, weary, and dusty, and with a little bundle slung upon a stick over his shoulder.  He accosted me in Spanish, asking whence we had come; on my reply, probably catching my foreign accent, he winked and said in plain English,—­“Yes?  And where are you going, pard?”

After a hard day’s ride, over a shut-in road, destitute of fine views, we reached the crest overlooking Comitan.  The descent was almost precipitous.  The town, better built and more compact than most, was situated near the foot of the hill; near it, on a terrace, was the cemetery.  On the level road, stretching to a long distance from the town, we saw lines of hundreds of pack-mules, dwarfed by distance.  South from the town stretched a grassy plain, bordered here and there with pine trees.  Back of this plain rose round-topped hills, and beyond them were again the blue mountains; far in the distance, behind these, towered the mighty crests of the Guatemalan Sierra Madre.

The town was crowded, as the annual feria (fair) was in progress, and it was with difficulty that we found a room to sleep in, going for our meals to one of the many temporary eating-places in the plaza.  Comitan is the last town of consequence in Mexico, and has wide fame on account of its spirits, known at comiteco.  This drink, of enormous strength, distilled from coarse, brown sugar (panela,) is a favorite in Guatemala, and its smuggling across the border, though risky, is a lucrative business.  There are scores of little distilleries in the town, many of them belonging to and conducted by women.