Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/67



 Leave Mexico — Cuernavaca — Tierra Caliente — Atlacamulco — Orange groves — Sugar cane — Annual produce — Will of Cortes — Description — Coffee plantation — Scorpions — List of venomous reptiles — Acapansingo — Doubts and difficulties — A decision.

February 2d.

day in a hospitable country house, too sunny to go out, and nothing else to do, are temptations sufficient to induce me to sit down and give you an account of our proceedings during these last two days. Yesterday, the first of February, at four in the morning, very sleepy, we set off in the diligence which we had taken for ourselves; our sole luggage, two portmanteaus and a carpet bag; our dresses, dark strong calico gowns, large Panama hats, rebosos tied on like scarfs, and thick green barége veils. A government escort of four soldiers with a corporal, renewed four times, accompanied us as far as Cuernavaca, which is about eighteen leagues from Mexico, and the entrance as it were to tierra caliente. These are supposed sufficient to frighten away three times the number of robbers, whose daring, however, has got to such a height, that no diligence now arrives from Puebla without being robbed. Six robberies have happened there in the last fortnight, and the road to