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354 o'clock, accompanied part of the way by Señor Ysasaga and other gentlemen, amongst whom was Madame Yturbide's brother. We are now returning to Morelia, but avoided Curu and the rocks, both to save our animals, and for the sake of variety. We rode through large tracts of land, all belonging to the Indians. The day was agreeable and cloudy, and the road, as usual, led us through beautiful scenery, monotonous in description, but full of variety in fact. Though nearly uninhabited, and almost entirely uncultivated, it has pleased Nature to lavish so much beauty on this part of the country, that there is nothing melancholy in its aspect; no feeling of dreariness in riding a whole day, league after league, without seeing a trace of human life. These forest paths always appear as if they must, in time, lead to some habitation; the woods, the groves, the clumps of trees, seem as if they had been disposed, or at least beautified by the hand of art. We cannot look on these smiling and flowery valleys, and believe that such lovely scenes are always untenanted—that there are no children occasionally picking up these apricots—no village girls to pluck these bright, fragrant flowers. We fancy that they are out in the fields, and will be there in the evening, and that their hamlet is hid behind the slope of the next hill; and it is rather when we come to some Indian hut, or cluster of poor cabins in the wilderness, that we are startled by the conviction that this enchanting variety of hill and plain, wood and water, is for the most part unseen by human eye, and untrod by human footstep.