linen on their heads. There was a grand
background to the picture in a mountain range, rising
tier above tier : not in blue delicate peaks and
crags, as in the Alps, but in solid, sullen,
dun-coloured masses. I can recal one now, with
ribbed flanks, and a great shelving head, that
looked like an old brown lion, couchant.

The railway gentlemen resided at a little
cantonment of timber and corrugated zinc
huts, the last of which, although weather-tight
and agreeably repellant of various insects
(which swarm in wooden structures), were,
when the sun shone, intolerably hot. As the
sun so shone habitually, without mercy from
eight in the morning until six in the evening,
the corrugated zinc huts became by sunset so
many compact ovens, suited either to baking,
broiling, or stewing, the inmates. However,
life in Mexico amounts, in the long run, only
to a highly varied choice of evils; and devouring
insects being somewhat more aggravating
than a warm room, the engineers had chosen
that evil which they deemed the lesser. I
suffered so terribly, however, during my sojourn
in this highly rarefied country from determination
of blood to the head that I entreated my
hosts to be allowed to sleep under a palm
thatch in lieu of corrugated zinc. My wish
was acceded to—to my partial destruction.

We dined sumptuously on hot stews, made
much hotter with chiles and "peperos," the
effect of which last condiment on the palate I
can only compare to that of a small shrapnel
shell going off in your mouth. We had plenty
of sound claret, and, if I remember right,
a flask or so of that white-seal champagne,
which at transatlantic tables is considered
to be many degrees preferable to Veuve
Cliquot. A bottle of " Sunnyside" Madeira,
warranted from a Charleston " garret," was also
produced. We were too recently from
Havana to be unprovided with Señor Anselmo del
Valle's fragrant merchandise; and, let me
whisper to the wanderer, that he who spares
no efforts to be provided with good cigars
in his baggage, will be at least enabled to make
some slight return for the hospitality he will
receive. For, in these far-distant cantonments
the stock of cigars is liable to run out, and
can with difficulty be renewed.

After dinner we talked Mexican politics — a
conversation which generally resolved itself
into three conclusions. First, that when things
come to the worst, they may mend. Second,
that things had come to the worst in Mexico.
Third, that Maximilian and his empire might
last as long as the French occupation
continued, and as long as his own stock of gold
ounces and hard dollars held out. I can aver
that on this last head I never heard any more
sanguine opinion expressed during the whole
time I was in Mexico. Then we played a hand
at poker, and tried a rubber at whist, then
songs were sung, and then we went out for
a walk. The French tattoo had sounded,
and most of the moustachioed warriors had
retired to their huts; but there were strong
pickets patrolling the streets, and double
guards posted at every gate. When I speak
of the "gates" of this place, I allude simply
to certain booms or logs of timber placed
athwart blocks of stone at certain intervals,
and by the side of each of which was a
French guard hut. When I allude to La
Soledad's "streets," I mean simply that the
palm-branch and mud-and-wattle huts of the
Indian and half-caste population had been
erected in two parallel lines, with a few alleys
of smaller hovels, with succursals of dunghills
branching from them. Once upon a time
I believe La Soledad had possessed a " plaza,"
several stone houses, and two churches; but
all that kind of thing had been, to use the
invariable American locution when speaking of the
ravages of civil war, " knocked into a cocked-
hat," by contending partisans.

In La Soledad, we lived in an easy fashion.
We dined without any table-cloth, and with a
great many more knives than forks. We
occasionally carved a fowl with a bowie-knife. Our
claret had been drawn direct from the wood into
calabashes of potters' ware, kneaded and fired
on the spot, and the white-seal champagne had
been opened by the simple process of knocking
the neck off the bottles. It was very
unconventional when we sallied forth on a stroll to
see the mats which served as doors to the
Indian huts all drawn on one side, and the
inmates making their simple preparations for
retiring for the night, such preparations
consisting chiefly in everybody taking off what
little he had on, and curling himself up in a
ball on the straw-littered ground. The family
mule was tethered to a post outside, and
the background was filled up by the family
pigs and poultry. It was the county of
Tipperary with a dash of a Bedouin douar, and a
poetic tinge of the days of the Shepherd Kings of
Palestine. Everybody had, however, not gone to
bed. There was life at La Soledad; life half of
a devotional, half of a dissolute kind. The
stone churches, as I have said, had been
"knocked into a cocked-hat," but Ave Maria
was sounding on a little cracked bell suspended
between three scaffold-poles, and a dusky
congregation — all Indians — were kneeling on the
threshold of a wigwam somewhat larger, but
fully as rudely fashioned, as its neighbours,
where an Indian priest was singing vespers.
There could not have been a more
unconventional church. The poor celebrant was
desperately ragged and dirty, and his vestments
were stuck over with little spangles and
tarnished scraps of foil paper; but, he had a
full, sonorous voice which seemed to thrill
his hearers strangely. Two great twisted
torches of yellow wax. were placed on the altar,
which looked like a huge sea-chest. Another
torch, of some resinous wood, flamed at the
entrance of the hut, and threw the kneeling
worshippers into Rembrandt-like masses of light
and shade. On the altar were the usual paltry
little dolls — not much paltrier than you may see
in the most superb fanes in Italy or Spain — but
there was singularly unconventional ornament.
The poor curé of the church, I was told, had