with our own eyes, we could never have believed to be a natural effect of light and shade. To us, still far down in the cave, the entrance was only illuminated by reflected light; but as the Indians reached it, the direct rays of sunlight fell upon them, and their white dresses shone with an intense phosphoric light, as though they had been self-luminous. It is just such an effect that is wanting in our pictures of the Transfiguration, but I fear it is as impossible to paint it upon canvas as to describe it in words.
Next morning our friend Don Guillermo said good-bye to us, and started to return post-haste to his affairs in the capital. We stayed a few days longer at Cocoyotla, never tiring of the beautiful garden with its groves of orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, and the river which, running through it, joins the stream that we heard rushing along in the cavern, to flow down into the Pacific.
On Sunday morning the priest arrived on an ambling mule, the favourite clerical animal. They say it is impossible to ride a mule unless you are either an arriero or a priest. Not that it is by any means necessary, however, that he should ride a mule. I shall not