We left Chanandaigua early in the morning, for we had a long march before us, and desired to avoid the intense heat of midday as far as possible. The road led most of the way through an almost unbroken forest, interrupted at long intervals by a patch of corn or sugar-cane, with a footpath winding off to some invisible and isolated farmhouse. Except in the towns and villages, I do not remember seeing more than one building during our whole march;--the country seemed uninhabited, and the fat and fertile soil suffered for want of hands to trim its waste luxuriance. Among the strange trees of the forest, the mahogany seemed like an old acquaintance. Those that we saw were about the size of our largest oaks, and closely resembled them in the size and formation of the branches.
We passed this day through one or two small towns, the inhabitants of which came running to the doors to feast their eyes on so unusual a spectacle. Everywhere we were received with shouts of welcome;--even the little children joining in the cry of "los buenos Americanos!" Yet it must be confessed that our appearance was by no means prepossessing;--we looked more like a band of robbers or ragamuffins than the peaceful representatives of the greatest country in the known world, and perhaps owed more to our reals and revolvers than our vanity would have been willing to allow. But whatever may have been the reason, we had no cause to complain of incivility, and the only serious annoyance was the everlasting "poco tiempo." In the mouth of a Spaniard or an Indian these words possess the most perplexing significance. They are a sufficient answer to all complaint or expostulation. They are expected to feed the hungry, to quiet the impatient, and to satisfy the inquisitive. They afford the best possible refuge for indolence and stupidity, and there is reason to fear that as long as the Spaniard retains these words in his vocabulary he will continue to be distinguished for both those vices.
It was by a strange misnomer that we called our driver hombre. He had, to be sure, the outward semblance of a man, but he had no right to such a distinctive title. Curiosity, not that of the monkey, but of the philosopher, is man's most striking characteristic. Instead of defining him as a laughing animal or a cooking animal, I would define him as a curious animal. From this definition our hombre would certainly have been excluded. Of curiosity of any sort he had not, apparently, a single particle, and his intelligence was of the most contracted order. This was just the character for poco tiempo. He understood the uses of the phrase to perfection. If he delayed starting in the morning long after the last of our companions had disappeared, poco tiempo was his ready answer. If he loitered on the road without any assignable reason, when twilight was already stealing upon us, it was still poco tiempo. There was no use in getting into a passion,--in the first place he did not understand English, and if he had he would only have shrugged his shoulders a little more expressively, without losing a jot of his abiding complacency. We at length gave up the contest in despair, and submitted to a fate we could not resist, consoling ourselves with the reflection that an animal, who lived on cheese and sour Indian bread of the consistency of a bullet, must needs be of a very heavy, phlegmatic temper.