Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Almost the first person we saw was none other than Felipe, the arriero. He sat on the steps of the hotel portico as we rode up on our mules. Dismounting, I caught sight of his white face and staring eyes as he rose slowly to his feet, gazing at us as though fascinated.
To lose no time waiting for dinner, we bought bread and one or two large pineapples, which we ate under the shade of the trees in the plaza. The pineapples were delicious, being tender and exceedingly sweet; our arriero refused to eat any of them, asserting that they were barely fit to eat, lacking sweetness, and being prickly to the taste.
They say it is impossible to ride a mule unless you are either an arriero or a priest. Not that it is by any means necessary, however, that he should ride a mule.
On reaching an elevated position at a turn in the road whence they could see far in advance, they halted. "Why, I had supposed this was the pass," said Will Osten, turning to Bunco; "ask the arriero how far off it is now."
I was reflecting, I remember, that the formation was undoubtedly one of limestone, with here and there a layer of quartzite, when I was aroused by a shout from Harry. I approached. Harry and Desiree, with Felipe, the arriero, had halted and were gazing upward at the wall of rock which barred the exit from the passage.
A large stream, it was said, flowed past that city, but whether the Goascoran or some other, or whether it flowed north or south, neither arriero nor correo could tell. The navigability of the Goascoran was also a doubtful question.
Far down in the valleys Will Osten and his friends had left their canoe, and hired mules with an arriero or mule-driver to guide them over the difficult and somewhat dangerous passes of the Andes.
Reader, could you thus stand upon the summit of Orizava, and look down to the shores of the Mexican Gulf, you would have before you, as on a map, the scene of our "adventures." Anahuac is Mexico. Jornada is a day's journey. Pescador is a fisherman. Vomito is yellow-fever. Carbonero is charcoal-burner. Arriero is mule-driver.
On our complaining of this treatment, we were told that we were two vagabonds whom nobody knew; who had come without an arriero, and had already set the whole house in confusion. As a great favour, however, we were at length permitted to take up our abode in a ruinous building down the yard, adjoining the stable, and filled with rats and vermin.
By the time we were ready to start we had a good-sized pack-train on our hands. The proprietor of the hotel found us an arriero, whom he declared to be the most competent and trustworthy guide in all the Andes a long, loose-jointed fellow with an air of complete indifference habitually resting on his yellow, rather sinister-looking face.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking