With this we mounted.
In vain the _presidente_ and officials begged us to wait, promising that everything should be prepared.

Time was too precious, and away we rode.
Soon after leaving Cuquila we struck a fifty-minute mountain, the summit of which we made at nine o'clock exactly.

Here we sat in the shade and lunched on bread and pineapples, bought the day before in Tlaxiaco.

From the summit, there was a slow and gentle descent around that ridge, and then a slow incline along an endless ravine, until at last we came out upon a crest, from which we looked down upon one of the grandest mountain scenes of the world.

A valley of impressive size, surrounded by magnificent mountain masses, lay below us, and just to the right, at our feet, was Chicahuastla.