The road to our next stopping-place was remarkably good, and the scenery very fine,—the road winding along the side of a mountain and overlooking deep valleys in which the night-clouds still lingered. By the wayside we saw a cascade of calcareous water, which petrified twigs and leaves in its reach. By eleven o’clock we rode into a sugar-plantation belonging to President Barrios, now in the charge of an old schoolmate of his, Juan Prado. There both sugar and coffee were cultivated, and much fine imported stock kept. It was but one of the many fincas belonging to the President, where he has endeavored to improve the agricultural standard of his country and the native stock as well. The cane was of the ribbon variety, and of fair quality; but the mill was simply a vertical twenty-inch iron roll-mill turned by four oxen. There was but one open kettle, with no clarifier; and the inspissated syrup was run into wooden moulds and cooled into very dark hemispherical blocks (_panela_),—a form of sugar much in demand among the Indios. Señor Prado received us most hospitably, and set before us bananas, anonas, and limas, or sweet lemons; then brought us large glasses of a warm liquid made from rice and sugar,—not at all to our taste, although a favorite drink of the mozos. The buildings at the President’s finca were neither pleasant nor convenient; but a large roof, substantially framed, was being walled in with hewn pine-planks three inches thick, each plank representing an entire tree. In this building men were grating off the juicy pulp of the coffee-berry in rude machines; after this pulping the berries are washed, and spread in the sun to dry. We here learned that we could not cross the Chixoy (pronounced _chisoy_) River that afternoon, as the wire suspension-bridge had been swept away the last year, and the man whose duty it was to haul travellers across on ropes would not be there so late in the day; we were consequently obliged to yield to the importunities of our host and stay over night at Primavera. To entertain us, in the afternoon Señor Prado took us to a mound which the new roadway had just grazed; and together we dug out fragments of fine pottery and bits of human bones much decayed,—the lower third of a left femur and a fragment of a pelvis being the most distinctly human. Some earthen vessels had been found here and sent to the Museo Nacional in Guatemala City. The bones were mingled with charcoal and ochre, and often cemented together like lime concretions or fulgurites.