holding forth to a staid quartermaster, who
is steering. Another is harmoniously intoxicated.
Then there is a man who is in a lachrymose
state of liquor, and is probably bewailing
La Belle France and his Mother. Suddenly a
negro, who is mad drunk, tries to jump overboard.
Such a bustle, such a commotion!
They get the obstreperous black man down
and lay him in the sheets, and he, too
begins to sing. It is as though you were a
deaf man looking at the "propos des buveurs,"
in Rabelais. And in the midst of all this the
boat with its stolid sober rowers goes pitching
and bounding about the field of the telescope,
sometimes swerving quite out of it, and leaving
but a blank brightness; then, coming into full
focus again, in all its wondrous detail of reality.

After a night not entirely unembittered by
the society of mosquitoes, we rose, took the
conventional cup of chocolate, crust of dry
bread, and glass of cold water, and, bidding
farewell to our entertainers, drove to the
railway terminus. I didn't expect much from a
railway point of view, and consequently was not
disappointed. We have all heard of things being
rough and ready. There was plenty of roughness
here, without the readiness. It was nearly
noon, and the industrial staff of the station,
represented by two Indians in striped blankets
(serving them for coat, vest, and pantaloons),
and monstrous straw hats, were sleeping in
two handbarrows. The station-master, a creole
Spaniard, had slung his grass hammock in
a shady nook behind the pay-place, and was
sleeping the sleep of the just. There was
a telegraph office, recently established by the
French; and the operator, with his face resting
on his arms, and those limbs resting on
the bran-new mahogany instrument from Paris,
snored peacefully. It was the most primitive
station imaginable. There was one passenger
waiting for the train, a half-caste Mexican,
fast asleep at full length on the floor, and with
his face prone to it. He had a bag of Indian corn
with him, on which, for safety, he lay; and he
had brought a great demi-pique saddle too, which
rested on his body, the stirrup leathers knotted
together over the pummel, and which looked
like a bridge over the river Lethe. Where was
his horse? I wondered. Did he own one, or had
his gallant steed been shot under him in battle,
and was he on his way to steal another?
Altogether, this ricketty ruinous railway station,
with the cacti growing close to the platform;
and with creepers twining about every post and
rafter, and bits of brick, and stray scaffold-poles,
and fragments of matting, and useless
potsheds, and coils of grass rope littered about
in the noontide glare; reminded me with equal
force, of an Aztec building speculation overtaken
by bankruptcy, and of a tropical farmyard in
which all the live stock had died of yellow fever.

The time for the train to start had long
expired; but there was no hurry; so my travelling
companion lay down with his head on the
half-caste's saddle and took a little nap. I
wandered on to the platform, and there, to my
pleasurable surprise, found one man who was
awake. Who but a French gendarme? One of
a picked detachment of that admirable force
sent out to Mexico to keep both invaders and
invaded in order—combed, brushed, polished,
waxed, pomatumed, booted, spurred, sabred,
belted, cocked hatted, gauntletted, medalled—
a complete and perfect gendarme. He was
affable, sententious and dogmatic. "Mexico,"
he observed, "was a country without hope." I
have since inclined to the belief that the gendarme
did not dogmatise quite unreasonably on
this particular head. He further remarked that
discipline must be maintained, and that in view
of that necessity he had usually administered
"une fameuse volée," in the shape of blows with
the flat of his sword, to the station-master.
He accepted a cigar, to be reserved for the time
of his relief from duty; and not to be behind
hand in politeness, he favoured me with a pinch
of snuff from a box bearing on the lid the
enamelled representation of a young lady in her
shirt sleeves and a pair of black velvet trousers
dancing a jig of a carnavalesque type. "I
adore the theatre," said the gendarme.
"Monsieur has no doubt seen La Belle Hélène in
Paris?" I replied that I had witnessed the
performance of that famous extravaganza.
"Ah!" continued the gendarme, with something
like a sigh. "They essayed it at Mauritius;
but it obtained only a success of esteem.
Monsieur may figure to himself the effect of a Belle
Hélène who was a mulatto. As for 'Agamemnon, '
he did not advance at all. J'aurais
bien flanqué trois jours de salle de police à ce
gredin là? I intend, Monsieur," he concluded,
"to visit the Bouffés, and to assist at a
representation of the work of M. Jacques Offenbach,
when I reimpatriate myself and enter the civil."
Honest gendarme! I hope the Vomito spared
him, and that he has reimpatriated himself by
this time, and seen, not only La Belle Hélène
but Orphée aux Enfers and la Grande Duchesse
de Gerolstein.

The station-master woke up about one
o'clock, and it appeared that he had sent a
messenger down into the town to ask my friend
at what time he would like to have the train
ready. There was no other passenger save the
half-caste, who would very cheerfully have
waited until the day after next, or the week
after next, or the Greek kalends. My friend
said he thought we might as well start at
once, so half a dozen Indians were summoned
from outhouses where they had been dozing,
and we proceeded to a shed, and picked out
the most comfortable carriage in the rolling
stock, which was but limited. We found a
"car " at last, of the American pattern, open
at either end, but with cane-bottomed instead
of stuffed seats, and Venetian blinds to the
windows. The engine, also, presently came
up puffing and sweating to remind us of a
fact which had, at least, slipped my memory—
that we were living in the nineteenth and
not in the ninth century; a locomotive of
the approved American model; blunderbuss
funnel; "cowcatcher" in front; penthouse in
rear for the driver; warning bell over the