‘This hating and hateful country.’

At the time there was no land route from central Mexico to Yucatan. Going by way of Veracruz, he sails on a questionable craft to Frontera in Tabasco. From Frontera it takes eleven hours by boat up the R&iacuteo Grijalva to reach Villahermosa. From there he wants to go to San Crist&oacutebal de las Casas but, failing to find reliable guides, he yields to the inevitable and decides to fly from Villahermosa to Salto de Agua. To make his misery complete, he has only two books with him. He has finished Cobbett’s Rural Rides and has been rationing Trollope’s Dr. Thorne at the rate of twenty pages a day. On his last night in Villahermosa, he comes to the end of the Trollope, only to discover that his copy is misbound and lacks four pages near the conclusion.