Here I experienced a sample of a native bed, if such an arrangement of folding sticks and tight-stretched canvas can be called a bed. It is a simple cot of canvas without a mattress, a microscopic pillow, and a few covers. One writer graphically describes his experience with such a cot: “I have tossed on this cot racked with fever, listening day and night to the discords of a neighbouring graphophone hoarsely venting grand opera and negro minstrelsy, my temperature at one hundred and seven, and with two hundred grains of quinine scattered through my anatomy. I wish my worst enemy a no more hideous experience.” I was, however, weary enough to sleep on a stone floor and never slept sounder than I did that night on that hard, unyielding cot, and awakened in the morning refreshed and ready for the remaining twenty-four miles of the journey. Bright and early the next morning our little cavalcade left this cheerful hostelry and wended its way on toward the Gulf. We were thankful indeed that our lot had been cast in such a pleasant place. This hotel was made possible by the number of foreigners engaged in surveying and grading the new railroad which passed through this village. Few towns of this size in Guatemala can boast of a hotel, and, in the absence of such accommodations, the traveller is either obliged to take refuge at a native hut or in the _cabildo_, the public hall, which is always free and open to the traveller and is generally anything but an attractive place, for cleanliness is not one of its attributes, as it seems to be no one’s particular duty to look after it. There were no such steep ascents or descents this day as we had on the first day’s journey through the mountainous region, although we were constantly going down into a lower altitude. Scarcely had we left the village until our path was sheltered from the sun by a wonderful curtain of vegetation that seemed to belong to fairy land. Woven into it were fantastic ferns, lianes that swung from the tops of lofty trees, splendid orchids and bromeliads, and the rustling, waving fronds of many palms. It was such a road as I had never seen before. Reaching the end of this enchanted road I saw my companions disappear down a densely-wooded ravine, for my mule was lagging behind as usual. I did not see them for more than an hour, as the ravine twisted and turned so much that one’s range of vision was very small, although the scenery was beautiful. The path crossed and re-crossed the little stream many times. I grew rather alarmed when the paths forked, but trusted to my nondescript steed rather from necessity than confidence. We finally left the ravine and came out upon the first level road we had travelled since leaving Guatemala City, and there were my companions at just about the regulation distance in advance.