The air was cool and fresh, and even though the sharp bits of rock and loose ash of the desert were hard on our feet, it was a rather welcome change--at least to me--after the interminable jungles. Maliche, however, was ill at ease. As the sun rose higher, he glanced apprehensively about, kept close to me and seemed nervous. Possibly it was merely the Indian’s inherent dread of the unknown, perhaps it was superstition, or a premonition, or again it may have been merely the effect of the strangeness, the newness of a desert, upon a man accustomed all his life to forests and jungles. As the sun rose higher we suffered from the heat and glare, but we had already made good headway, and I flattered myself we would be at the farther side of the desert before the hottest part of the day. But though we tramped for hours, though the sun reached the zenith, although the ashes under our blistered feet felt like redhot iron, though the air was like the blast from a furnace, though our eyes ached and blurred with the blinding glare, we seemed no nearer the distant volcanoes, and the farther side of the desert seemed ever to recede as we advanced. Our throats were parched and dry and the warm water in the gourds seemed only to add to our thirst. Still we kept on, and by the middle of the afternoon we could see that we actually were making progress, that the green hillsides behind us were faint and hazy in the distance, that the vegetation ahead was nearer, clearer, though the twin cones seemed as far away as ever. Not until the sun was sinking in the west did we reach the edge of the blasted plain and the vegetation beyond it. But the spot that had appeared green and cool from a distance was little better than the desert itself; a growth of harsh dry grass, dull-green cacti, stiff-leaved aloes, thorny bromeliads, stunted shrubs and bushes and a few spiny-stemmed dwarf palms. Farther in, the growth was thicker, greener and more promising, but there was no water, and the few drops remaining in our calabashes barely wetted our dry and dusty mouths. Maliche, however, had the instincts of the primitive savage, the ability to make the most of Nature’s scantiest resources, and though I am quite sure he had never before seen a desert or desert plants, though he had never been in want of water, yet he at once rose to the emergency. Cutting off the top of a huge barrel-shaped cactus, and scooping out the pithy interior, he soon had several quarts of clear cool sap which--although slightly bitter in taste--was the most delicious draught that ever passed my lips. Too tired to go a step farther, we stopped where we were, ate what remained of our meat, and slept on the bare sand. Little did we know what lay before us when, on the following morning, we rose with aching limbs and swollen feet, and with only cactus sap to allay our hunger, again resumed our way. We were buoyed up with the expectations of finding water and game, of