Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/259

 reluctant farewell to our kind entertainer, we mounted and turned our faces northward, toward our home.

A wide plain skirts the foot of the sierra that hems in the Valley of Mexico, and runs from the valley of Cuautla into that of Puebla. Over it lay our road this afternoon, and after passing one of those strange and deep barrancas, down which plunged a cascade of clear water for some two hundred feet, we commenced the ascent of the range of mountains forming the last barrier between us and the Capital.

Scarcely had we mounted the hills, when it began to rain for the first time, during the day, since we left Cuernavaca, and I experienced immediately a remarkable change in the temperature, from the scorching heat in the square of Cuautla. Our serapes were at once put on, and we wore them for the rest of the evening.

Santa Inez is on the limit of the tierra caliente;—at five or six miles distance the culture of the sugar cane ceases, and the tierra templada commences.

We passed the beautiful Indian village of Acaclauca, with its green leaves, chapels, and churches, in front of one of which I saw the last tall group of palm-trees, standing out with their feathery branches relieved against the snow of Popocatepetl. It was a strange picture, mingling in one frame the tropic and the pole.

Near eight o'clock the distant barking of dogs announced our approach to the village where we designed resting until morning. Small fires were lighted before each door, and by their light we meandered through half a dozen crooked and hilly streets before we reached the house of the worthy Don Juan Gonzales, (an old friend of the Consul,) who, at a moment's notice, received us under his hospitable roof.

Don Juan is a man "well to do" in the world of his little village;—he keeps store, rents a room to a club of village folks, who like a drop of aguardiente or a quiet game of monté; and, above all, has the loveliest girl in the tierra templada for a daughter.

Don Juan ushered us ceremoniously into his long, low, back parlor. In one corner stood a picture of the Virgin with a lamp burning before it, while opposite was a table around which were gathered five of the neighbors in shirt sleeves, slouched hats, and beards of a week's growth, busy with a game of greasy cards, in the light of a dim "tallow." Ever and anon, the little sylph of a daughter brought in the liquor for the boors. It was Titania and Bottom—Ariel and the Clown,—and I longed for the pencil of Caravaggio to sketch the gamblers, or of Retzsch to embody the whole spirit of the scene.

After a frugal supper of tortillas and chocolate, we retired to feather beds and clean sheets on the floor,—but I was glad when we were called to horse at three in the morning, It had been a night of sore encounter; an army of fleas attacked us, the moment we retired, with a vigor and earnestness that did justice both to their appetite and our blood.