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342 skill, who said they could fasten their lasso where they wished, was asked if they could catch hold the tip of the tail. He has not answered yet. The heifer casts itself on the ground; but it is no use. Its fight is fought, and it has lost. It surrenders, and trots submissively into the corral.

The country still holds its wildness, whiteness, and greenness. For a dozen miles the road winds in and out among the mesquite-trees, a good pathway and exceedingly romantic. It enters then the pretty town of San Francisco.

No village so ornate in water-color frescoes have I seen in Mexico as this bit of a city. Irapuato is its only rival, and that is not so daintily touched up. The hand of a master is here. Look at that drinking-saloon on the south-west corner of the plaza. Never was an inner fresco of a Parisian parlor more beautiful. The straw-tinted wall is bordered at top and bottom with mode colors, representing cornices and pediments of variegated marble, rich and strong and delicate. La Plaza it is called: it deserves a better business. All round the square this passion rages. It has caught the church, which rejoices in its blue and white dress. All are more pronounced than the La Plaza, which has touched perfection's height in this cheap and pretty adornment. A statue in the square is an additional proof of the taste of the inhabitants.

Jesus Maria is the next dirty village, a good name for a Nazareth of a town.

Arroyas, the changing-place for the mules, has two or three huts, one of which without chimney was full of smoke of a tortilla-frying fire. At the other were a half-dozen ancient oranges, of which the lady sent me one by her little six-year-old boy, and which I as generously gave to the mozo, sending her back my card for lack of a more valuable commodity less than two reals, which I thought too much for such a compliment. You will find it, doubtless, on her card-rack when you pass through that station.

Now comes another hard pull over the uncovered rocks. Where the soil is on, the road is good; but where it is off, no attempts are made to replace it, and we stagger along on the bed rock which