Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/289

 Rh porcelain tiles; and they are all clustered together, with tombs and a battlemented wall about them. A student architecture corming this way with his sketch-book his hand could find material here for a month. I am not sure that the trip could not be made enjoyably, as it certainly could economically, on foot, with an attendant carry a knapsack, as we met some German naturalists and prospectors making it farther on. Close by is a garden on a great scale the—Jardin Borda—to which one obtains admittance for a fee. It has a stone fish-pond as large as a lake, terraces, urns, and statues worthy of the most luxurious prince in Europe. I was told that it could be bought for $5000. I asked the custodian about the owner—what he had been remarkable for.

"He had altos pesos" replied the man, which is Spanish for "a pile of money." Bushels of delicious mangoes were rotting untouched along the walks. From the outer terrace you look down into the barranca which Alvarado crossed by a fallen tree when sent by his indefatigable general against the disaffected Gonzalo Pizarro. Here are guava, mango, pine-apple, banana, and plenty of other fruits, but not yet the cocoa-nut, which only flourishes lower down.

Behold us ready to set forth on the trail! Vincente Lopez is not present, strange to say, to cast about us the fostering care he has promised. On the contrary, he has quietly sold out his contract and gone back to the Parque del Conde with his profits. We are in the hands of a new muleteer, "Don Marcos," who has never made the journey to Acapulco before, and a fourteen-year-old boy, "Vincente," who is depended upon to find the way. Every cavalcade in Mexico is bizarre, and ours, ordinary enough there, would attract attention elsewhere. First, upon the mule "Venado" rides the colonel, a tall, spare `