The brightest stars that he has watched from childhood up, are brighter now than ever. New stars have filled the voids in his celestial chart, and satellites are dancing round well-known planets. The North Star is still visible, now 19° above the horizon. The Dipper has dipped far down to the northward. The Southern Cross—that mysterious combination of five stars, that emblem of the faith of Southern America, which only reaches full meridian at midnight prayers—is here 25° above the horizon, shining brilliantly. And then there are so many unknown southern stars, and so many unfamiliar constellations, that the short hours of night are well spent upon the driver's box.
We have been gradually descending into what appears to have once been the bottom of a salt lake. The ground is partially incrusted with a compound salt called tequisquita, is composed of equal proportions of muriate of soda, carbonate of soda, and insoluble metal (common earth): this compound is used by the Mexican bakers and soap-boilers as a substitute for salt and soda. A stinted grass is here and there scattered in patches over the bad land, as these barren plains are called; but the dry earth, which is rarely moistened for six months together, is covered with drifting sand, which is driven about by the hot winds of this desert.
How great was the change from what we had passed! The celestial chart, that we had been admiring with so much rapture, had gradually rolled itself up, and as the sun came out, we had a view of the dreariness around us. It was truly a bad land—a land of evil—even a land for wolves to prowl in, and where vultures watch for the carcasses of dying mules, and where robbers ply their calling with little fear of detection. Here, in the midst of all this dreariness, we saw a pretty lake, and beautiful scenery around it, that looked for a little while like an enchanted scene, and then vanished into air. We passed the hostelry of Tepeyagualco, where water is drawn