Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/132

130 That the tyrants in this case are of your own race, makes it but the more harrowing. If they can be mean enough, or absurd enough, with their nonsense about protection and tariff, to hunt through all your possessions, and pick out your armful of poor, dear, pretty things, why let them. You, at least, will not help them to make out the list. If they take them, they shall do so without leave or license. And so, having seized the bull by the horns, you wait to see whether it is going to toss, or leave you alone. In our case it proved to be the mildest-mannered animal possible; we entered into our kingdom again as untouched by scathe of customs-man or duty as we left it; and so home, without trial or tribulation.

I wonder, if we ever are happy enough to go to Mexico again, whether the long brown fields, with their tufts of strong green grass, will stretch away to the brilliant mountains in the distance; and here and there a water-course gather about it its small oasis of beauty, with the great unsheltered corn-bins looking like high-peaked Arab tents on the horizon; whether the picturesque shepherds with their long wands will guide their wandering flocks of sheep and goats across the brown