daylight no human strength could prevail against it, it added to our uncomfortable feelings to know that it would be nearly night when the crisis arrived. We had but one consolation—there were no women or children on board. All were able-bodied men, capable of doing all that men could do in a struggle for life. But, fortunately for the reader of these pages, to say nothing of the relief to ourselves, at one o'clock the wind veered; we got on a little canvass; the good ship struggled for her life; by degrees she turned her back upon danger, and at night we were again on our way rejoicing.

On the twenty-seventh we furled sails off the port of Sisal. Five vessels were at anchor, an extraordinary circumstance for Sisal, and fortunate for us, because otherwise, as our captain had never been there before, though carefully looking for it, we might not have been able to find it. Our anchorage ground was on the open coast, two or three miles from land, at which distance it was necessary to keep, lest we should be driven ashore in case of a norther. Captain Scholefield, in fact, before he had discharged his cargo, was obliged to slip his cables and put to sea, and did not get back to his anchorage ground in nine days.

It was only four o'clock in the afternoon, but, by the regulations of the port, no passenger could land until the vessel had been visited by the health and custom-house officers. We looked out till dark, and long after the moon rose, but no notice whatever was taken of us, and, with no very amiable feelings toward the lazy officials, we turned in again on board.

In the morning, when we went on deck, we saw anchored under our stern the brig Lucinda, in which we had thought of taking passage; she had sailed from New-York four days after we did, and arrived during the night.

Very soon we saw coming off toward us the separate canoes of the health and custom-house officers. We were boarded by a very little man with a very big mustache, who was seasick before he mounted the deck, and in a few minutes betook himself to a berth. The preliminaries, however, were soon settled, and we went ashore. All disposition we might have had to complain the night before ceased on landing. Our former visit was not forgotten. The account of it had been translated and published, and, as soon as the object of our return was known, every facility was given us, and all our trunks, boxes, and multifarious luggage were passed without examination by the custom-house officers.

The little town of Sisal had not increased either in houses or inhabitants, and did not present any additional inducements to remain in it. The same afternoon we sent off our luggage in a carreta for Merida, and the next morning started in calezas ourselves.

From the suburbs of the town the plain was inundated, and for more than a mile our horses were above their knees in water. When we passed before, this ground was dry, parched, and cracking open. It was now the last of the rainy season, and the great body of water, without any stream by which to pass off, was drying up under a scorching sun, to leave the earth infected with malaria.

We had arrived in the fulness of tropical vegetation; the stunted trees along the road were in their deepest green, and Dr. Cabot opened to us a new source of interest and beauty. In order to begin business at once, he rode in the first caleza alone, and before he had gone far, we saw the barrel of his gun protrude on one side, and a bird fall. He had seen at Sisal, egretes, pelicans, and ducks which were rare in collections at home, and an oscillated wild turkey, which alone he thought worth the voyage to that place; and now, our attention being particularly directed to the subject, in some places the shrubs and bushes seemed brilliant with the plumage and vocal with the notes of birds. On the road he saw four different species which are entirely unknown in the United States, and six others which are found only in Louisiana and Florida, of most of which he procured specimens.

We stopped at Huncuma during the heat of the day; at dark reached Merida, and once more rode up to the house of Doña Micaela. Coming directly from home, we were not so much excited as when we reached it after a toilsome and comfortless journey in Central America; but even now it would ill become me to depreciate it, for the donna had read the account of my former visit to Merida, and she said, with an emphasis that covered all the rest, that the dates of arrival and departure as therein mentioned corresponded exactly with the entries in her book.

We had arrived at Merida at an opportune moment. As on the occasion of our first visit, it was again a season of fiesta. The fête of San Cristoval, an observance of nine days, was then drawing to its close, and that evening a grand function was to be performed in the church dedicated to that saint. We had no time to lose, and, after a hasty supper, under the guidance of an Indian lad belonging to the house, we set out for the church. Very soon we were in the main street leading to it, along which, as it seemed, the whole population of Merida was moving to the fête. In every house a lantern hung from the balconied windows, or a long candle stood under a glass shade, to light them on their way. At the head of the street was a large plaza, on one side of which stood the church, with its great front brilliantly illuminated, and on the platform and steps, and all the open square before it, was a great moving mass of men, women, and children, mostly Indians, dressed in white.

We worked our way up to the door, and found the church within a blaze of light. Two rows of high candlesticks, with wax candles eight or ten feet high, extended the whole length from the door to the altar. On each side hung innumerable lamps, dotting the whole space from the floor to the ceiling; and back at the extreme end, standing on an elevated platform, was an altar thirty feet high, rich with silver ornaments and vases of flowers, and hung with innumerable lamps brilliantly burning. Priests in glittering vestments were officiating before it, music was swelling through the corridor and arches, and the floor of the immense church was covered with women on their knees, dressed in white, with white shawls over their heads. Through the entire body of the church not a man was to be seen. Near us was a bevy of young girls, beautifully dressed with dark eyes, and their hair adorned with flowers, sustaining, though I was now a year older and colder, my previous impressions of the beauty of the ladies of Merida.

The chant died sway, and as the women rose from their knees, their appearance was like the lifting of a white cloud, or spirits of air rising to a purer world; but, as they turned toward the door, the horizon became dusky with Indian faces, and half way up a spot rose above the rest, black as a thunder-cloud. The whole front ranks were Indians, except a towering African, whose face, in the cloud of white around, shone like the last touch of Day and Martin's best.

We waited till the last passed out, and, leaving the empty church blazing with light, with rockets fireworks, drums, and violins all working away together on the steps, we followed the crowd.

Turning along the left side of the plaza, we entered an illuminated street, at the foot of which, and across it, hung a gigantic cross, also brilliantly illuminated, and apparently stopping the way. Coming as we did directly from the church, it seemed to have some immediate connexion with the ceremonies we had just beheld; but the crowd stopped short of the cross, opposite a large house, also brilliantly illuminated. The door of this house, like that of the church, was open to all who chose to enter, or rather, at that moment, to all who could force their way through. Waiting the motion of the mass before us, and pressed by those