Our road led up a winding path, where the mosquitoes were "plentiful and strong on the wing," to the crest of the island, which was divided into the eastern side, all sand and low heather-like plant, sea-thistle and stunted cactus; and the western, all jungly woods. For some miles we had to keep to the eastward. The sand was soft and deep, and the roots of the plants sprawling around gave one no foothold. In anticipation of the difficulty of changing even small paper money in the island _pueblos_, we had filled a money-belt with two hundred Mexican dollars (£20), each in size nearly as big as an English five-shilling piece. This belt had always, so far, been a bit of a white elephant; to-day it was a positive cross. We realised for the first time what is described so eloquently as "the burden of wealth"; and before we had staggered and floundered our first mile in that relentlessly yielding sand we both, as our turn came to carry it, cursed a civilisation which had created the necessity of bullion and fervently wished we had not a copper in the world. Following Crusoe's suggestion, we started cutting into the woods at a point where some cocoa palms stood. Though we thus lost the sand we found the mosquitoes; and nobody but the keenest of ruin-hunters would have stood the earthly hell through which we passed for the next hour. In a wood too high and thick to admit air, but too low to shade you from the scorching sun; with every second bush bearing thorns an inch long; your legs entangled in bines and creepers so stout that once caught no struggles, however heroic, would free you; too hot to wear your flannel shirt-sleeves down, and too pestilential with mosquitoes for you to dare expose an inch more skin than was necessary; bathed in sweat, stumbling, stooping, creeping, leaping, over, under, in and out; cutting your way foot by foot,--you need the true explorer's zeal not to sit down and give it up. But we had not come six thousand miles to give it up; and after we had made two false detours we "struck" a ruin which well rewarded us for our sufferings.