Somehow I took little note for a considerable time after this how the rest of us were bestowed, until I found myself in company with Listado, De Walden, and Mr Hudson, on horseback, without well knowing how I got there, followed by a cavalcade of six negroes, on mules, with two sumpter ones with luggage, and three led small Spanish barbs, with side saddles, all curveting in the wake of the carriage with the ladies, by this time trundling through the city gate, a cable's length a-head of us. "I say, Benjie Brail," shouted Listado, "have you become a mendicant friar, that you travel without your hat"---- "My hat?" said I, deucedly taken aback and annoyed; "true enough--how very odd and foolish--I say, Nariz de Niéve, do oblige me, and ride back for my sombrero." CHAPTER IV. A CRUISE IN THE MOUNTAINS----EL CAFETAL.[1] [1] _Cafetal_--Coffee estate. We arrived, at five in the afternoon, at Mr Hudson's property, having stopped, during the heat of the day, under a large deserted shed, situated in the middle of a most beautiful grass plat, and overshadowed by splendid trees. A rill of clear cold water ran past, in which we cooled our liqueurs; and the substantial lunch we made, enabled all of us to hold out gallantly until our journey was finished. The road at one time had wound along the margin of the sea; at another it diverged inland amongst tree-covered knolls, and at every turn one was refreshed by splashing through a crystal-clear stream. Towards the afternoon we appeared to have made a longer detour, and to have struck farther into the country than we had hitherto done. We passed several sugar estates, and then came to a large new settled coffee property, with the bushes growing amongst the fire-scathed stumps of the recently felled trees (up which the yam vines twisted luxuriantly, as if they had been hop-poles), loaded with red berries, that glanced like ripe cherries amongst the leaves, dark and green as those of the holly. We had just been greeted by the uncouth shouts of a gang of newly imported Africans, that under white superintendents were cultivating the ground, when Listado's horse suddenly started and threw him, as he rode ahead of us pioneering the way for the ladies, who were by this time mounted on their ponies, the volante having been left at the estate below. He fell amidst a heap of withered plantain suckers, which crashed under him,--in an instant a hundred vultures, hideous creatures, with heads as naked of feathers as a turkey-cock, the body being about the same size, flew up with a loud rushing noise, and a horrid concert of croaking, from the carcass of a bullock they were devouring, that lay right in the path, and which had startled the horse. We were informed by one of the superintendents that the creature had only died the night before; although by the time we saw it, there was little remaining but the bones--indeed half a dozen of