He who has never tried to travel this "road" has a new experience in store. There are hillsides that are all but perpendicular, which would not be so bad, but they are a mixture of clay and soapstone and moisture, and it is practically impossible to stand erect without holding on to nearby saplings. How a laden mule can navigate such a causeway of destruction is a mystery to be explained only by people who understand mules. And I rode a mule whose mastery of the art of trail-navigation left nothing to be learned. In the ignorance of my novitiate I alighted before the first precipitous descent to which we came. The mule, with the conservatism born of experience, took his time to make the descent, and I essayed to go before and show him how to do it. He watched me with intense interest, while I gingerly approached the edge of the slippery declivity and started down. As a descent it was a complete success. At the second step I slipped on the wet clay and went rolling and coasting to the bottom, whither I arrived in record time, plastered from head to foot with the raw material of which pottery is made. I struggled to my feet and looked up at the mule. He still regarded me intently, and I think that he winked, at least his ear did. Then he deliberately put his front feet over the edge, gathered in his hind feet, and with all fours together, sat down and gracefully slid to the bottom of the hill. He arrived right side up at the bottom, munching a mouthful of grass, which he seized in passing on the way down, and turned to look at me with an expression that needed no interpreter. And I took the hint and stayed on his back most of the day. After a solid day of this dense growth where we could not see more than a stone's throw at any time it was with a distinct sense of relief that we caught sight of daylight at last through an opening ahead and came upon the fringes of the Talamanca plantation. [Illustration: PROPOSED LOCATION FOR REST CURE]