Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/399

Rh

near the midnight hour, the birds in the court are singing as gayly as at dawn. Hear that clarine! deep and long and swelling and falling are its notes, with a true operatic touch. How that madcap mocking-bird is caroling! They are making a night of it, truly. The day is too hot for their work, as it is for that of men. But, unlike their bigger and featherless biped kindred, they give songs in the night. Only that watchman's whistle replies to their softer and richer note, and a hallooing somebody, who bellows as if mad or afraid, or both. What is his office? To call a revolution? The air is full of that cry.

The roomy court of this hotel is unusually luxuriant. The arcade inclosing it is spacious; flowers, as fragrant as the birds are brilliant, fill the air with odors. Every thing is for coolness and rest. Rest with the pen is a goodly rest: let us take it.

It was at day-break this morning that the coach rattled out of Saltillo with two sleepy passengers, a German and myself. The face of the country in that warm gray dawn looked changed from all behind it. America had touched it with her wand. The huge, high walls of the haciendas gave way to no fences at all. The land lay utterly open. Not the least impediment to your going