Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/261

 fields are arid—the grain small and unproductive—and the whole has a waste and moor-like appearance. The Indians seem even dirtier, if possible, than those we have left behind us, and the patient mules travel over the long and dreary sands as if in a new Arabia.

Passing through several mud-walled villages, we came at length upon the Vera Cruz road and reached the town of Ayotla, seven leagues from Mexico, about four in the afternoon. Here we found Pedro waiting for us at the door of the inn, having passed through the village of Tenango while we were enjoying our tortillas and milk within doors.

We rest here during part of to-night, and to-morrow at daylight we intend to reach home, after a journey of just three hundred miles on horseback, without robbery, accident or illness.

There are no beds for us to-night, so I shall stretch myself on the floor with my saddle-bags for a pillow. How relative are all our comforts, or ideas of comfort! If a man is really hungry he can eat unbuttered bread. If a man is really sleepy he can repose on a floor, and the hardness of the planks will never wake him. We begin life by finding nothing soft enough but our mother's bosom—we go on to the cradle—we rise to the crib—we aspire to the cot—and, at last, arrive at the dignity of a French bedstead with mattress and tambour! We think we never can sleep out of this last extreme of modern comfort—and, scarcely even out of our own. Yet nothing is easier. I commenced this journey, little more than a week ago, by sleeping on a sacking-bottom—and, after going through all the variations of tressels, canes, beds, cots, and hammock, at last came down to the floor and my saddle-bags, where I slept just as soundly and refreshingly.

Yet I would recommend every one who is about to travel through the tierra caliente, to procure a hammock of Sisal grass. With this, he is entirely his own master; and surely no mode of sleeping is more luxurious in a hot climate. You swing it from the rafters of the room—it is above the floor, clear of the walls and free from insects—it bends to each motion of the body, fitting neatly to every part of your frame—you set it in motion, and while it swings you to sleep, it fans and refreshes by its gentle waving through the air.

Besides the beautiful scenery through which I have passed during this journey, nothing has impressed me so favorably as the unaffected hospitality we met with everywhere, whether we came introduced or not. The old phrase "Mi casa, Señor, está muy à su disposicion:" "My house is entirely at your service," was not a phrase of course—a mere formula to be gone through and forgotten. Their houses, their animals, their