Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/38

, besides a table, a dozen chairs, knives, plates and forks, a few strings of Weathersfield onions, and flexibility of limbs and countenance to grace the thousand shrugs, apologies, compliments, humbug and grimaces necessary to make a successful innkeeper in a Spanish country.

At Plan our guard left us—as the lieutenant's command extended no farther. Our host of the flexible face and productive cookery, insisted that there was not much danger, besides which there were no troops on the station; so he bowed us to the coach door, and declared for the fiftieth time that he had been delighted to see us, hoped we would not fail to call again if we returned, and assured us that he only kept a few choice bottles of his claret for such "caballeros" as we were!

What with sour wine, sour spirits, and imposition, I doubt much if there was ever an angrier coach-load on any highway. We were effectually ill-tempered, and we looked to our primings with the full disposition to defend ourselves nobly. It would have fared ill with any one who had ventured to attack us during our first hour's ride. In addition to this, our road, as soon as it left the river, ascended rapidly and passed over a track which would in any other country be called the bed of a mountain stream, so rough and jagged was its surface. Although it is the duty of the Government to keep this highway in order, yet as the chief travelling is on horseback, and the principal part of merchandise is transported on mules, no one cares how these animals get along. Sure-footed and slow, they toil patiently among the rents and rocks, and their drivers are too well used to the inconveniences to complain. Besides this, in case of insurrections, it is better for the roads to be in bad condition, as it prevents easy communication between the several parts of Mexico, and the disjointed stones serve to form, as they have often done, breastworks and forts for the insurgents.

But over this mass of ruin we were obliged to jolt in the ascent of the mountain, during the whole afternoon, meeting in the course of it fifty wagons laden with heavy machinery for factories near Mexico.

I must not forget to mention one redeeming spot in the gloomy evening. On looking back as we were near the summit of the mountain, I caught a glimpse of the plains and hills over which we had been all day toiling. The view was uninterrupted. Before us lay valley upon valley, in one long graceful descending sweep of woodland and meadow, until they dwindled away in the sands to the east, and the whole was blent, near the horizon, with the blue waves of the Gulf of Mexico. Just then the sun broke out from the region of clouds which we were rapidly approaching in our ascent, and gilding, for a moment, the whole lowland prospect, I could almost fancy I saw the sparkle of the wave crests as they broke on the distant and barren shore.

At the village on the mountain we could get no guard. This is said to be a very dangerous pass; but the commanding officer told us he had been stationed here for two weeks, during which he had scoured the mountains in every direction, and believed his district to be free from robbers.