Summary
On Monday, the twenty-second of January, two hours before daylight, we started for the port. ‘Hezoos led the way, carrying before him all my luggage, rolled up in a baquette, being simply a cowhide, after the fashion of the country. At daylight we heard behind us the clattering of horses’ hoofs, and Don Manuel de Aguila, with his two sons, overtook us. Before the freshness of the morning was past we reached the port, and rode up to the old hut which I had hoped never to see again. The hammock was swinging in the same place. The miserable rancho seemed destined to be the abode of sickness. In one corner lay Señor D'Yriarte, my captain, exhausted by a night of fever, and unable to sail that day.
Dr. Drivin was again at the port. He had not yet disembarked his machinery; in fact, the work was suspended by a mutiny on board the English brig, the ringleader of which, as the doctor complained to me, was an American. I passed the day on the seashore. In one place, a little above high-water mark, almost washed by the waves, were rude wooden crosses, marking the graves of unhappy sailors who had died far from their homes. Returning, I found at the hut Captain Jay, of the English brig, who also complained to me of the American sailor. The captain was a young man, making his first voyage as master; his wife, whom he had married a week before sailing, accompanied him. He had had a disastrous voyage of eight months from London; in doubling Cape Horn his crew were all frostbitten and his spars carried away.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan , pp. 331 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1841