We passed the new hospital, which Dr. Estrada showed us with pride; it will be, if ever completed, the best in Guatemala. A visit to a sugar-estate in the valley showed us fields of red cane, small, but very sweet. There were two small mills, both made in Buffalo, N. Y.,—one turned by wind, the other by oxen; and the product is about nine hundred pounds of brown sugar a day. At five the next morning we were serenaded by the military band of the town,—an honor we had received several times before; and the music was very good. We left the ancient town of Chiquimula at eight o’clock, although our hostess, Señora Anacleta, wished us to stay and join an expedition of her friends to Copan to examine “las ruinas,”—an excursion we longed to make, but could not then. The road to Zacapa was good, and we saw many gigantic cylindrical cacti. These curious trees looked pulpy and fragile; but Frank tried a branch with his raw-hide lasso, and the horse could not pull it off! We shall never again lasso a prickly cactus. On trees by the road (chiefly euphorbiaceous trees) were large nests, eighteen to twenty inches long, of some mud-wasp. As we approached Zacapa we crossed the Hondo by a ford where the water was not two feet deep; but the path was very long and winding, and the current rapid. As usual, there was no posada; but a call on the Jefe, Don Brígido Castañeda, resulted in a page being sent to conduct us to the decent house of a widow, where we found lodging and comida. Our first search was for a blacksmith, our animals needing re-shoeing. There were three _herreras_ in the town; but one was sick, another had no charcoal, while the third had no nails,—and there was no lending among these sons of Thor. So Frank had to do the work himself with hammer and axe; and his general handiness again stood us in stead. There was little enough to attract us in this town, and early the next morning (Sunday) we sent the mozos ahead and followed before the weekly drill of the militia was finished. In Zacapa the Government has a large tobacco-factory; and the “Zacapa puros” are much liked by smokers. All the way out of town the fields were dry, although we passed several small streams, and beyond San Pablo a grove of fan-palms watered by a fine brook. No fruit was anywhere to be seen, not even on the great cacti. The Motagua River we had looked for at every turn, and at last we came upon a stream so rapid that it does not even water its dry banks. A swim was out of the question, but our bath was very refreshing.