Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/384

 372 "I am glad to find one man who can speak a Christian language."

"Go in there, sir, and I will meet you soon." The servants are immediately and uncommonly attentive. I enter the court set forth with flowers and birds, peacock, clarine, and others of gay apparel, enter the cool dining-room, vacant, and take a seat at the first place, which happened to be the head of the table. Soon the courtly youth entered and sat down to eat. Three others did, and I found, instead of being at a hotel table, I was a guest of a gentleman, and occupying his seat. "So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as a beast before" him. I bethought myself of him who with shame had to take a lower seat.

But the young gentleman did not object, and so the seat was kept. I found he was educated near Alexandria, could talk English well, was full of interest in the railroad question, as every body seems to be here. This hacienda was his uncle's, whom I had met seven leagues back, on his way to Congress. It was a cattle-raising farm, had on it now about five thousand cattle and forty thousand sheep and goats. It contained thirty square leagues, over seventy square miles, had on it silver and gold mines, but little worked, though the English ex-consul of Mexico had lately organized a company for their development. The thick silver spoons of the table were from the mine; an eighth of an inch the spoon was across its edge. Had I not had the fear of the unjust fame of my once military commander before my eyes, I would have begged or bought one of those specimens of the product of this farm.

He said the grazing here was excellent most of the year; dry now on the plains, but sweet in the mountains. The cattle were worth ten dollars a head at the hacienda. They kept three hundred men employed, and supported fifteen hundred to two thousand people.

He gave me an excellent dinner, for which he refused any pay. He was pleased, he said, to see Americans, and to revive his English. It revived very easily. I commend to all passers on this road the hospitalities of Señor Gabriel Bustamante, of the hacienda of Solado.