conversation with any object of interest or amusement. What words
were spoken were those simply needful, or produced by sympathy for
suffering. So they journeyed, always in the same places, with one
exception. They began their work with two guides leading them, but
before the first day was over one of them had fallen back to the
side of Mrs. Arkwright, for she was unable to sit on her mule
without support.

Their daily work was divided into two stages, so as to give some
hours for rest in the middle of the day. It had been arranged that
the distance for each day should not be long,--should be very short
as was thought by them all when they talked it over at San Jose; but
now the hours which they passed in the saddle seemed to be endless.
Their descent began from that ridge of which I have spoken, and they
had no sooner turned their faces down upon the mountain slopes
looking towards the Atlantic, than that passage of mud began to
which there was no cessation till they found themselves on the banks
of the Serapiqui river. I doubt whether it be possible to convey in
words an adequate idea of the labour of riding over such a path. It
is not that any active exertion is necessary,--that there is
anything which requires doing. The traveller has before him the
simple task of sitting on his mule from hour to hour, and of seeing
that his knees do not get themselves jammed against the trees; but
at every step the beast he rides has to drag his legs out from the
deep clinging mud, and the body of the rider never knows one moment
of ease. Why the mules do not die on the road, I cannot say. They
live through it, and do not appear to suffer. They have their own
way in everything, for no exertion on the rider's part will make
them walk either faster or slower than is their wont.