We each had a tumbler of warm milk as a “stirrup-cup” when we said our _adios_ to our kind host in the morning, and soon after six we were on the road again. Here, as so often again in the republic, we found that the road-bed was undergoing active repair. The primitive method of removing large rocks and ledges greatly interested us. Fires are kept up on and around these obstructions; when thoroughly heated, these are left to cool, or the cooling is hastened by water. In either case the hammerers have easy work. [Illustration: Rope Bridge over the Chixoy.] The narrower road led among pine-forests, where many of the trees had been girdled and were slowly decaying,—the _comajen_ being unknown at this elevation. Men were cutting timber for the President’s house and for a new bridge. A mortise is cut in the end of each log, to which the drag-ropes are fastened. We passed a pleasant village in the valley below us on our left, and after about nine miles of poor road we came to a rapid descent of twenty-two hundred feet, so steep that we were obliged to lead our mules almost to the bank of the Chixoy, where the pier on the side nearest us had been undermined in the last flood. The path ended on a narrow rock shelf, where was fastened a rude timber frame, from which two small and well-worn ropes stretched nearly two hundred feet to the remaining pier on the farther bank. A hundred feet below was the Chixoy, foaming over its rocky bed. This we might see to the best advantage; for one by one we sat in a sling hung from a rickety traveller, and, launching from the cliff, slid rapidly down the slack ropes, and after sliding back at the middle, were hauled up on to the remaining pier. From this structure we descended a rough ladder to the shore, which was sandy and strewed with bowlders and other remains of the action of higher waters. Dizzy as our own passage was, it was safe enough compared to the crossing of our animals. By the help of Indios, we stretched a rope across, and finally swam all our mules safely. Santiago and the bridge-keeper swam splendidly in the rapid current, and the latter was a fine muscular, lean specimen of manhood. Frank and I swam in as far as we dared, and landed the soaked and frightened animals. The bath was cool, and for the first time we had no thought of alligators. While I photographed the bridge, Frank went to the hamlet of Jocote to get eggs and tortillas, and Santiago boiled our coffee. Beautiful butterflies were hovering over the rounded pumice-stones strewed along the banks; and on a rock were fine Achimenes, the Dorstenia (which resembles botanically a fig turned inside out), and a wild Martynia. [Illustration: FRANK AND HIS MARE MABEL.]