Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/345

Rh The dry brook, with its superabounding rocks, is our highway for over a mile. A huge rock rising from its brink, is the last resting-place for horse and rider. It is of clay or soil of the country, and has embedded several strata of loose stones, as if formed by the deposits of freshets, and then left for the sun to bake into a solid pudding. The epizootic shows its green presence around the nostrils of the mozo's horse—a going and not a coming presence—which has notwithstanding walked and paced its nigh to fifty miles, patiently and pleasantly, and will rewalk it homeward on the morrow.

The high-road is soon struck, and the Valley of La Camada lies before us, like every valley of Mexico, a thing of beauty rare. The brown earth, soft and sown, awaits the coming rain that shall fill it with life. The silver-gray hills lie near us, seemingly, though a score of miles away, bare of all save sunlight. The river Sancho winds, broad and shaded, along the foreground; broad in its plans and ultimate fulfillment, though now it is dwindled to a shorter span along the farther bank and under the willows thereof, while grass is springing up in its bed on this side, and the cattle are eating it. Trees and grasses make this central line a line of beauty which, were we less tired, would be lingered over longer. But this fifty miles by an unused rider has made back and brains give out, and the plaza of the hacienda is more fascinating than all fields, or brooks, or trees, or grasses, or cows, or any other creature. The Indian festa, with its chirruping guitars and twinkling feet, is alike unheeded. The court is entered, and the couch is sought, and on its restful bosom all the mountain climbings and anti-climbings, and all the scenes and musings thereto belonging, are as though they had never been.