buying a packet of "nougat." I have
forgotten the name of that village in Old Spain
where fifty women always fly at you and
force you to buy embroidered garters. A
similar assault, though a silent one, is made
on you at Amosoque.

But our mules are hackled to, again,
and the mayoral has filled his jacket pocket
with a fresh supply of pebbles to fling at
their ears if they are lazy. Bump, bump,
thud, thud, up the middle and down again.
We are again travelling on the hard road.
This kind of thing has been going on for
many days; and this kind of village we
have halted at over and over again. Ojo
de Agua was very like Nopaluca; Nopaluca
was very like Acagete; and all these were
very like Amosoque. We are out of the
dark defiles of the Cumbres — horrifying
mountain passes, grey, jagged, arid,
cataractless; no sierra caliente has greeted our
eyesight since we left Orizaba. The open
has been mainly desert, intolerable dust and
caked baked clod producing nothing but
the nopal and the maguey, the prickly
pear and the cactus. The former is picturesque
enough, and, besides, it yields the
juice, which, fermented, the Indians and
half castes call pulque, and on which they
get swinishly intoxicated. An adult maguey
is very stately to look upon; but goodness
keep all nervous ladies and people given to
dreaming dreams, and young children, from
the sight of the Mexican prickly pear. The
plant assumes the most hideously grotesque
forms. It is twisted, and bent, and gnarled
like metal scroll work which some mad giant
has crumpled up in his fingers, in a rage. It
is a tangle of knotty zigzags interspersed
with the prickly fruit, which can be
compared to nothing but the flattened faces
of so many demon dwarfs, green with
bile and thickly sown with bristles. The
prickly pear, to me, is Bogey.*
* It may be mentioned that the heraldic cognisance
of the Mexican nation bears intimate reference to the
prickly pear. The legend runs that Cortes the Conquistador,
during his march to Mexico, descried an eagle
perched upon a nopal; and when the country achieved
her independence four centuries afterwards ''the bird and
bush" became the "Mexican arms."

Let me see, where was it, between Orizaba
and this evil place of Amosoque, bristling
with spurs and scoundrels, that we
picked up the Canonigo. Ah! I remember,
it was at Sant' Augustin del Palmar. We
reached Sant' Augustin at about two o'clock
in the afternoon, just as the diligencia from
Mexico had drawn up at the door of the
principal fonda, and precisely in time for
the diligence dinner. Now I would have
you to understand that the chief dish at the
coach dinner in all regions Iberian, both on
the hither and thither side of the Atlantic,
and even beyond the Isthmus and under
the southern cross, is the PUCHERO:* print it
in capitals, for it is a grand dish; and that
the puchero is the only thing in Old or New
Spain concerning which tolerable punctuality
is observed. You have heard, no doubt,
of the olla-podrida as the "national" dish
of Spain; but, so far as my experience goes,
it is a culinary preparation which, like the
rich uncle in a comedy, is more talked about
than seen. While I was in Mexico city my
eye lighted one day on a placard in the window
of a "bodegon" or eating-house, in the
Calle del Espiritu Santo, setting forth that
on the ensuing Thursday at noon "una arrogante
olla" would be ready for the consumption
of cavaliers. I saw this announcement
on Monday morning, and for three days
I remained on tenter hooks expecting to
partake of this arrogant olla-podrida. I
concealed my intention from my hospitable
host. I was determined to do something
independent. I had travelled long in search
of beef; there might be, in the arrogant
olla, a bovine element; and the efforts of
long years might be crowned at last with
success. I went on Thursday; but the
vinegar of disappointment came to dash my
oil. "Hoy, no," said the keeper of the
bodegon, "mañana se abra." There was to
be no arrogant olla that day, there would
be the next. Mañana means to-morrow;
and to-morrow to a Spaniard means the
Greek Kalends. I have never tasted an
olla, arrogant or submissive.
* The names of both the national dishes of Spain are
derived from the utensils in which they are served. A
puchero is a pipkin, and an olla an earthenware pot.
Podrida means simply "rotten" — observe the singular
corruption of sense in the French "pot pourri," a vase
full of dried roses and fragrant spices.

But of the puchero I preserve the
pleasantest remembrances. There is beef in it:
boiled beef: the French bouilli, in fact.
There is bacon. There are garbanzos (broad
beans), and charming little black-puddings,
and cabbage, and delicate morsels
of fried banana. It is very wholesome and
very filling; and there is no use in your
complaining that an odour of garlic
pervades it, because the room and the
tablecloth and your next neighbour are all
equally redolent of the omnipresent "ajo."
The puchero (poured from its pipkin) is in
a very big platter, and what you have
to do is to watch carefully for the platter
as it is passed from hand to hand, to
take care that it is not diverted from