Fortunately for our poor animals, Dolores had provided against contingencies like this, and taken in a supply of maize at La Union. As for ourselves, what with a few eggs and _frijoles_, furnished by the _alcalde_, in addition to the stock of edibles, pickled oysters and other luxuries, prepared for us by Doña Maria, we contrived to fare right sumptuously in Goascoran. We afterwards found out, experimentally, what it was not to live, in the sense intended to be conveyed by the unfortunate _alguazil_ and the impetuous _alcalde_, and which H. declared logically meant to be without _tortillas_--But we could never make out why the alcalde should call the _alguazil_ "a beast," and beat him over his shoulders with a cane, withal. Goascoran is a small town, of about four hundred inhabitants, and boasts a tolerably genteel church and a comfortable _cabildo_. It is situated on the left bank of the river to which it gives its name, and which here still maintains its character of a broad and beautiful stream. On the opposite side from the town rises a high, picturesque bluff, at the foot of which the river gathers its waters in deep, dark pools with mirror-like surfaces, disturbed only by the splash of fishes springing at their prey, or by the sudden dash of water-fowls settling from their arrowy flight in a little cloud of spray. I have alluded to the castellated Rock of Goascoran, which, however, is only a type of the general features of the surrounding country. The prevailing rock is sandstone, and it is broken up in fantastic peaks, or great cubical blocks with flat tops and vertical walls, resembling the mesas of New Mexico. At night, their dark masses, rising on every hand, might be mistaken for frowning fortresses or massive strongholds of the Middle Ages. They seem to mark the line where the volcanic forces which raised the high islands in the Bay of Fonseca had their first conflict with the sedimentary and primitive rocks of the interior. The river is full of boulders of quartz and granite reddened by fire, resembling jasper, and alternating with worn blocks of lava,--further evidences of volcanic action. Altogether, the country, in its natural aspects, reminds the traveller of the district lying between Pompeii and Sorrento, in Italy, and probably owes its essential features to the same causes.