My purpose was to go right through Central America, from ocean to ocean, and to accomplish this it was necessary that I should now make my way down to the mouth of the San Juan river—to San Juan del Norte as it was formerly called, or Greytown, as it is now named by the English. This road, I was informed by all of whom I inquired, was very bad,—so bad as to be all but impracticable to English travellers.

And then, just at that moment, an event occurred which added greatly to the ill name of this route. A few days before I reached San José, a gentleman resident there had started for England with his wife, and they had decided upon going by the San Juan. It seems that the lady had reached San José, as all people do reach it, by Panamá and Punta-arenas, and had suffered on the route. At any rate, she had taken a dislike to it, and had resolved on returning by the San Juan and the Serapiqui rivers, a route which is called the Serapiqui road.

To do this it is necessary for the traveller to ride on mules for four, five, or six days, according to his or her capability. The Serapiqui river is then reached, and from that point the further journey is made in canoes down the Serapiqui river till it falls into the San Juan, and then down that river to Greytown.

This gentleman with his wife reached the Serapiqui in safety; though it seems that she suffered greatly on the road. But when once there, as she herself said, all her troubles were over. That weary work of supporting herself on her mule, through mud and thorns and thick bushes, of scrambling over precipices and through rivers, was done. She had been very despondent, even from before the time of her starting; but now, she said, she believed that she should live to see her mother again. She was seated in the narrow canoe, among cloaks and cushions, with her husband close to her, and the boat was pushed into the stream. Almost in a moment, within two minutes of starting, not a hundred yards from the place where she had last trod, the canoe struck against a snag or upturned fragment of a tree and was overset. The lady was borne by the stream among the entangled branches of timber which clogged the river, and when her body was found life had been long extinct.

This had happened on the very day that I reached San José, and the news arrived two or three days afterwards. The wretched husband, too, made his way back to the town, finding himself unable to go on upon his journey alone, with such a burden on his back. What could he have said to his young wife\'s mother when she came to meet him at Southampton, expecting to throw her arms round her daughter?

I was again lucky in having a companion for my journey. A young lieutenant of the navy, Fitzm—— by name, whose vessel was lying at Greytown, had made his way up to San José on a visit to the Ouseleys, and was to return at the same time that I went down. He had indeed travelled up with the bereaved man who had lost his wife, having read the funeral service over the poor woman\'s grave on the lonely shores of the Serapiqui. The road, he acknowledged, was bad, too bad, he thought, for any female; but not more than sufficiently so to make proper excitement for a man. He, at any rate, had come over it safely; but then he was twenty-four, and I forty-four; and so we started together from San José, a crowd of friends accompanying us for the first mile or two. There was that Secretary of Legation prophesying that we should be smothered in the mud; there was the Consul and the Consul\'s brother; nor was female beauty wanting to wish us well on our road, and maybe to fling an old shoe after us for luck as we went upon our journey.

We took four mules, that was one each for ourselves, and two for our baggage; we had two guides or muleteers, according to bargain, both of whom travelled on foot. The understanding was, that one mule lightly laden with provisions and a pair of slippers and tooth-brush should accompany us, one man also going with us; but that the heavy-laden mule should come along after us at its own pace. Things, however, did not so turn out: on the first day both the men and both the mules lagged behind, and on one occasion we were obliged to wait above an hour for them; but after that we all kept in a string together, having picked up a third muleteer somewhere on the road. We had also with us a distressed British subject, who was intrusted to my tender mercies by the Consul at San José. He was not a good sample of a Britisher; he had been a gold-finder in California, then a filibuster, after that a teacher of the piano in the country part of Costa Rica, and lastly an omnibus driver. He was to act as interpreter for us, which, however, he did not do with much honesty or zeal.

Our road at first lay through the towns of Aredia and Barba, the former of which is a pleasant-looking little village, where, however, we found great difficulty in getting anything to drink. Up to this, and for a few leagues further, the road was very fair, and the land on each side of us was cultivated. We had started at eight a.m., and at about three in the afternoon there seemed to be great doubt as to where we should stop. The leading muleteer wished to take us to a house of a friend of his own, whereas the lieutenant and I resolved that the day\'s work had not been long enough. I take it that on the whole we were right, and the man gave in with sufficient good humour; but it ended in our passing the night in a miserable rancho. That at the potrero, on the road to the volcanic mountain, had been a palace to it.

And here we got into the forest; we had hitherto been ascending the whole way from San José, and had by degrees lost all appearance of tillage. Still, however, there had been open spaces here and there cleared for cattle, and we had not as yet found ourselves absolutely enveloped by woods. This rancho was called Buena-vista; and certainly the view from it was very pretty. It was pretty and extensive, as I have seen views in Baden and parts of Bavaria; but again there was nothing about which I could rave.

I shall not readily forget the night in that rancho. We were, I presume, between seven and eight thousand feet above the sea-level; and at night, or rather early in the morning, the cold was very severe. Fitzm—— and I shared the same bed; that is, we lay on the same boards, and did what we could to cover ourselves with the same blankets. In that country men commonly ride upon blankets, having them strapped over the saddles as pillions, and we had come so provided; but before the morning was over I heartily wished for a double allowance.

We had brought with us a wallet of provisions, certainly not too well arranged by Sir William Ouseley\'s most reprehensible butler. Travellers should never trust to butlers. Our piece de résistance was a ham, and lo! it turned out to be a bad one. When the truth of this fact first dawned upon us it was in both our minds to go back and slay that butler: but there was still a piece of beef and some chickens, and there had been a few dozen of hard-boiled eggs. But Fitzm—— would amuse himself with eating these all along the road: I always found when the ordinary feeding time came that they had not had the slightest effect upon his appetite.

On the next morning we again ascended for about a couple of leagues, and as long as we did so the road was still good; the surface was hard, and the track was broad, and a horseman could wish nothing better. And then we reached the summit of the ridge over which we were passing; this we did at a place called Desenganos, and from thence we looked down into vast valleys all running towards the Atlantic. Hitherto the fall of water had been into the Pacific.

At this place we found a vast shed, with numberless bins and troughs lying under it in great confusion. The facts, as far as I could learn, were thus: Up to this point the government, that is Don Juan Mora, or perhaps his predecessor, had succeeded in making a road fit for the transit of mule carts. This shed had also been built to afford shelter for the postmen and accommodation for the muleteers. But here Don Juan\'s efforts had been stopped; money probably had failed; and the great remainder of the undertaking will, I fear, be left undone for many a long year.

And yet this, or some other road from the valley of San José to the Atlantic, would be the natural outlet of the country. At present the coffee grown in the central high lands is carried down to Punta-arenas on the Pacific, although it must cross the Atlantic to reach its market; consequently, it is either taken round the Horn, and its sale thus delayed for months, or it is transported across the isthmus by railway, at an enormous cost. They say there is a point at which the Atlantic may be reached more easily than by the present route of the Serapiqui river; nothing, however, has as yet been done in the matter. To make a road fit even for mule carts, by the course of the present track, would certainly be a work of enormous difficulty.

And now our vexations commenced. We found that the path very soon narrowed, so much so that it was with difficulty we could keep our hats on our heads; and then the surface of the path became softer and softer, till our beasts were up to their knees in mud. All motion quicker than that of a walk became impossible; and even at this pace the struggles in the mud were both frequent and uncomfortable. Hitherto we had talked fluently enough, but now we became very silent; we went on following, each at the other\'s tail, floundering in the mud, silent, filthy, and down in the mouth.

"I tell you what it is," said Fitzm—— at last, stopping on the road, for he had led the van, "I can\'t go any further without breakfast." We referred the matter to the guide, and found that Careblanco, the place appointed for our next stage, was still two hours distant.

"Two hours! Why, half an hour since you said it was only a league!" But what is the use of expostulating with a man who can\'t speak a word of English?

So we got off our mules, and draped out our wallet among the bushes. Our hard-boiled eggs were all gone, and it seemed as though the travelling did not add fresh delights to the cold beef; so we devoured another fowl, and washed it down with brandy and water.

As we were so engaged three men passed us with heavy burdens on their backs. They were tall, thin, muscular fellows, with bare legs, and linen clothes,—one of them apparently of nearly pure Indian blood. It was clear that the loads they carried were very weighty. They were borne high up on the back, and suspended by a band from the forehead, so that a great portion of the weight must have fallen on the muscles of the neck. This was the post; and as they had left San José some eight hours after us, and had come by a longer route, so as to take in another town, they must have travelled at a very fast pace. It was our object to go down the Serapiqui river in the same boat with the post. We had some doubt whether we should be able to get any other, seeing that the owner of one such canoe had been drowned, I believe in an endeavour to save the unfortunate lady of whom I have spoken; and any boat taken separately would be much more expensive.

So, as quick as might be, we tied up our fragments and proceeded. It was after this that I really learned how all-powerful is the force of mud. We came at last to a track that was divided crossways by ridges, somewhat like the ridges of ploughed ground. Each ridge was perhaps a foot and a half broad, and the mules invariably stepped between them, not on them. Stepping on them they could not have held their feet. Stepping between them they came at each step with their belly to the ground, so that the rider\'s feet and legs were trailing in the mud. The struggles of the poor brutes were dreadful. It seemed to me frequently impossible that my beast should extricate himself, laden as he was. But still he went on patiently, slowly, and continuously; splash, splash; slosh, slosh! Every muscle of his body was working; and every muscle of my body was working also.

For it is not very easy to sit upon a mule under such circumstances. The bushes were so close upon me that one hand was required to guard my face from the thorns; my knees were constantly in contact with the stumps of trees, and when my knees were free from such difficulties, my shins were sure to be in the wars. Then the poor animal rolled so from side to side in his incredible struggles with the mud that it was frequently necessary to hold myself on by the pommel of the saddle. Added to this, it was essentially necessary to keep some sort of guide upon the creature\'s steps, or one\'s legs would be absolutely broken. For the mule cares for himself only, and not for his rider. It is nothing to him if a man\'s knees be put out of joint against the stump of a tree.

Splash, splash, slosh, slosh! on we went in this way for hours, almost without speaking. On such occasions one is apt to become mentally cross, to feel that the world is too hard for one, that one\'s own especial troubles are much worse than those of one\'s neighbours, and that those neighbours are unfairly favoured. I could not help thinking it very unjust that I should be fifteen stone, while Fitzm—— was only eight. And as for that distressed Britisher, he weighed nothing at all.

Splash, splash, slosh, slosh! we were at it all day. At Careblanco—the place of the white-faced pigs I understood it to mean;—they say that there is a race of wild hogs with white faces which inhabit the woods hereabouts—we overtook the post, and kept close to them afterwards. This was a pasture farm in the very middle of the forest, a bit of cleared land on which some adventurer had settled himself and dared to live. The adventurer himself was not there, but he had a very pretty wife, with whom my friend the lieutenant seemed to have contracted an intimate acquaintance on his previous journey up to San José.

But at Careblanco we only stopped two minutes, during which, however, it became necessary that the lieutenant should go into the rancho on the matter of some article of clothes which had been left behind on his previous journey; and then, again, on we went, slosh, slosh, splash, splash! My shins by this time were black and blue, and I held myself on to my mule chiefly by my spurs. Our way was still through dense forest, and was always either up or down hill. And here we came across the grandest scenery that I met with in the western world; scenery which would admit of raving, if it were given to me to rave on such a subject.

We were travelling for the most part along the side of a volcanic mountain, and every now and then the declivity would become so steep as to give us a full view down into the ravine below, with the prospect of the grand, steep, wooded hill on the other side, one huge forest stretching up the mountain for miles. At the bottom of the ravine one\'s eye would just catch a river, looking like a moving thread of silver wire. And yet, though the descent was so great, there would be no interruption to it. Looking down over the thick forest trees which grew almost from the side of a precipice, the eye would reach the river some thousand feet below, and then ascend on the other side over a like unbroken expanse of foliage.

Of course we both declared that we had never seen anything to equal it. In moments of ecstasy one always does so declare. But there was a monotony about it, and a want of grouping which forbids me to place it on an equality with scenery really of the highest kind, with the mountains, for instance, round Colico, with the head of the Lake of the Four Cantons, or even with the views of the upper waters of Killarney.

And then, to speak the truth, we were too much engulfed in mud, too thoughtful as to the troubles of the road, to enjoy it thoroughly. "Wonderful that; isn\'t it?" "Yes, very wonderful; fine break; for heaven\'s sake do get on." That is the tone which men are apt to adopt under such circumstances. Five or six pounds of thick mud clinging round one\'s ............