The _presidente_ at Chiapa took us to the jail, where the prisoners were filed before us and made to hold out hands and feet for our inspection.

Such cases of _pinto_ as were found were somewhat carefully examined.

All we encountered there were of the white variety.
Later, at private houses, we saw some dreadful cases of the purple form.
Very often, those whose faces were purple-blotched had white-spotted hands and feet.
We had not planned to stop at Acala, but after a hard ride over a dreary road and a ferrying across a wide and deep river in a great dugout canoe thirty feet or more in length--our animals swimming alongside--we found our beasts too tired for further progress.

And it was a sad town.

How strange, that beautifully clear and sparkling mountain water often produces actual misery among an ignorant population! Scarcely had we dismounted at our lodging place, when a man of forty, an idiot and goitrous, came to the door and with sadly imperfectly co-ordinated movements, gestured a message which he could not speak.