But worse than all was the prospect of sleeping in the flea-infested hammocks, from one of which the body of a dead man had just been taken. We got the major domo to remove them and hire others, which, perhaps, were in reality not much better. Albino and Dimas had to lie down on the earthen floor, but they could not remain long. Dimas mounted lengthwise upon a log, and Albino doubled himself up in a bano, or bathing-tub, which kept him from the bare ground, but not above the jump of a flea. Fortunately, we suffered excessively from cold, which prevented us from being thrown into a fever, but it was one of the worst nights we had passed in the country. Early in the morning Bernaldo made his appearance, he and the carriers having had a harder time than our own. They had been lost, and had wandered till ten o'clock, when they came to a rancho, where they learned their mistake, but were too much tired to carry their loads any farther, and, with an Indian from the rancho to guide them, had set out two hours before daylight. The rancho of Macoba had been established but four years. It was situated in the midst of an immense forest; as yet it had been used only for the cultivation of maize, but the cura intended the ensuing year to commence a plantation of sugar. His inducement to establish a rancho at this place was the existence of the ruined buildings, which saved the expense of erecting huts for his criados; and he was influenced also by the wells and other remains of ancient watering-places. In the immediate vicinity of the buildings, without inquiring or seeking for them, we came across four wells, but all filled up with rubbish, and dry. Indeed, so many were known to exist, and the other means of supply were so abundant, that Senor Trego was about becoming a partner with the cura, under the expectation of clearing out and restoring these ancient reservoirs, furnishing an abundant supply of water, and calling around them a large Indian population. In the mean time the cura had constructed two large tanks, or cisterns, one of which was twenty-two feet in diameter, and the same in depth, and the other eighteen. Both these were under a large circular roof, or top platform, covered with cement, and sloping toward the centre, which received the great body of rain-water that fell in the rainy season, and transmitted it into the cisterns, and these furnished a supply during the whole of the dry season, as the major domo said, for fifty souls, besides fowls, hogs, and one horse. [Engraving 32: Building a Macoba]