Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/87

Rh. Salvator never drew a more bandit-looking figure, as he stood there with his blanket and slouched hat, and a knife in his belt, tall and thin and muscular, with his sallow visage and his sad, fierce eyes. However, he showed us the marks on his door, where a band of twenty robbers had broken in one night, and robbed some travellers who were sleeping there, of a large some of money.

Cn asked him how the robbers treated the women when they fell into their power. "Las saludan" said he, "and sometimes carry them off to the mountains, but rarely, and chiefly when they are afraid of their giving information against them."

At OJo de Agua, where we changed horses, we saw the accommodations which those who travel in private coach or litera must submit to, unless they bring their own beds along with them, and a stock of provisions besides—a common room like a barn, where all must herd together; and neither chair, nor table, nor food to be had. It was a solitary-looking house, standing lonely on the plain, with a few straggling sheep nibbling the brown grass in the vicinity. A fine spring of water, from which it takes its name, and Orizava, which seems to have travelled forward, and stands in bold outline against the sapphire sky, were all that we saw there worthy of notice.

We changed horses at Nopaluca, Acagete and Amosoque, all small villages, with little more than the posada, and a few poor houses, and all very dirty. The country, however, improves in cultivation and fertility, though the chief trees are the sombre pines. Still accompanied by our two escorts, which had a