We passed through the pretty village of Trinidad early the next morning, and arrived at nightfall at the larger town of Santa Barbara, where the sound of our mules’ hoofs pattering over the paved streets and the smell of smoking street lamps came to us with as much of a shock as does the sight of land after a week at sea. Santa Barbara, in spite of its pavements, was not a great metropolis, and, owing to its isolation, the advent of five strangers was so much of an event that the children of the town followed us, cheering and jeering as though we were a circus procession; they blocked the house in which we took refuge, on every side, so that the native policemen had to be stationed at our windows to wave them away. On the following morning we called to pay our respects on General Louis Bogran, who has been President of Honduras for eight years and an exile for two. He died a few months after our visit. He was a very handsome man, with a fine presence, and with great dignity of manner, and he gave us an audience exactly as though he were a dethroned monarch and we loyal subjects come to pay him homage in his loneliness. I asked him what he regarded as the best work of his administration, and after thinking awhile he answered, “Peace for eight years,” which was rather happy, when you consider that in the three years since he had left office there have been four presidents and two long and serious revolutions, and when we were in the capital the people seemed to think it was about time to begin on another. [Illustration: GENERAL LOUIS BOGRAN] We left Santa Barbara early the next morning, and rode over a few more mountains to the town of Seguaca, where the village priest was holding a festival, and where the natives for many miles around had gathered in consequence. There did not seem to be much of interest going on when we arrived, for the people of the town and the visitors within her gates deserted the booths and followed us in a long procession down the single street, and invaded the house where we lunched.