quietly, mind, in consequence of the road—and
pass the day there. Again you start at four
A.M. from Cordova for Sant' Augustin del
Palmar, where you dine and sleep. The next
day's journey brings you, by sunset, to Puebla.
On the next day you make Rio Frio in time for
breakfast, and at about five in the afternoon you
pass the Garita, and you are in the city of
Montezuma in the capital of Mexico. That
is the road. I spent, going up, six days on the
journey; but I was an inmate of a private carriage.
I came down again in a public diligence,
in three days; but, for reasons I shall
explain afterwards, the agony of the private
travelling carriage far surpassed that of the
stage-coach.

Ostensibly I had no reason for grumbling, I
was the guest of a kind friend whose carriage had
been built in New York with a special view to
Mexican highways, and who, being a great friend
and patron of the contractor for the Imperial
Diligences—Mexico was an empire in '64—was
certain of relays of mules all the way from the sea
coast to the capital. We had a good store of wine
with us, and plenty of Havana cigars; and in
the way of edibles the commissariat of Mexico is
as abundant as that of Old Spain is meagre.* The
route was singularly clear from highway
robbers at that time; the French being in force
at Cordova, Orizaba, and Puebla, and patrolling
every league of the way, not only with their
own dragoons, but with local levies known as
contra-guerilleros. Finally, we had taken the
precaution of leaving behind us in safe care at
Vera Cruz, our watches, gold "ounces," and
other valuables, keeping only a few loose dollars
for the expenses of the journey. I even left my
clothes and servant on the coast, and during
the six weeks I remained in Mexico city was
not only boarded and lodged, but washed and
clothed by my generous host: even to the
articles of purple and fine linen, lapis-lazuli
wrist-buttons, a Mexican hat as broad as a
brougham wheel, and a pair of spurs with
rowels as big as cheese-plates. So, if we had
been robbed on the way, the guerillas would
have found very little of which to plunder
us. The pain, the misery, the wretchedness
I endured, almost without intermission for six
days- at night you generally dreamed of your
bumps, and suffered all your distresses over
again—were entirely due to the abominable road
upon which we entered, for our sins, at La
Soledad, and which we did not leave until we
came to the very custom-house barrier of
Mexico. Twelve years have passed since I
travelled on the Czar's Highway and found it
bad. I have waded through the Virginian mud
since then; have made acquaintance with
muleback on the banks of the Guadalquiver;
have tried a camel (for a very short time), at
Oran. But I can conscientiously declare that I
never found so hard a road to travel as that road
between Vera Cruz and Mexico, and I am
confident that, were I to live to sixty years of age
(the Mexican railway by that time being
completed and paying fifteen per cent on its stock,
and a beautifully Macadamised carriage road
running beside it for three hundred miles) and
I were questioned as to what the Mexican highway
was like in 1864, I should, on the "beating
the bounds" principle, preserve as lively a
remembrance of its horrors as I preserve of it
now, a peaceable and contented daily traveller
on the North-London and South-Western railways.

* It is curious that in countries where wine
is plentiful there should be nothing procurable to
eat, and that in non-wine-growing, but beer or
cider-producing countries, the traveller should always be
sure of a good dinner. Out of the beaten track in
Italy, a tourist runs the risk of being half starved.
In Spain, he is starved habitually and altogether;
but he is sure of victuals in England, in America,
and in Russia. Even in the East, fowls, eggs, kids,
and rice are generally obtainable in the most out of
the way places: but many a time have I been
dismissed hungry from a village hostelry in France
with the cutting remark: "Monsieur, nous n'avons
plus rien." There is an exception to the rule in
Germany—I except Prussia—which bounteous land
runs over with wine, beer, beef, veal, black and
white bread, potatoes, salad, and sauerkraut.

Had I not been somewhat obtuse, I might
have noticed on board the steamer which
brought us from Havana, that my friend was
nervous, even to uneasiness, as to the form my
earliest impressions of Mexican travelling might
assume. I must expect to rough it a little, he
remarked. I answered that I had tried an
American ambulance waggon, and a M'Clellan
saddle, and that I could not imagine anything
rougher than those aids to locomotion. "Our
roads are not quite up to the mark of Piccadilly,"
he would hint sometimes. "You see, since
the French came to attack Juarez, everything
has been knocked into a cocked hat."
However, he always wound up his warnings by
declaring that we shouldn't find a single
robber on the road, and that we should go up
to Mexico, "like a fiddle." If the state in
which I eventually reached Mexico, bore any
resemblance to the musical instrument in
question, it must have been akin to that of the
fiddle of the proprietor of the bear in Hudibras,
warped and untuned, with my bow broken,
a fracture in my stomach, another in my back,
and my strings flying all abroad.

I sincerely hope that I shall never see Vera
Cruz again, the ill-omened, sweltering, sandy,
black, turkey-buzzard-haunted home of yellow
fever! I shall not forget, however, that I was
hospitably entertained there, and especially I
shall never lose consciousness of a long telescope
in the saloon overlooking the roadstead, to
which I am indebted for one of the drollest
scenes I ever saw in my life. There were three
or four French men-of-war stationed at Vera
Cruz at the time, but they could not lie in the
harbour, which is not by any means landlocked,
and has but an insufficient breakwater in the
castle of San Juan de Alloa. The Spithead of
Vera Cruz is off Sacrificios, a place which owes
its name to the horrible human sacrifices