Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/410

398

since three o'clock this morning is an excuse for sleeping at near the midnight hour, especially as two will find me up again. But the sight of a petroleum lamp is such a novelty that one can not help being kept awake a little season. I have not seen one on a hotel table before since I left the States. It is like the land-birds Columbus saw, harbingers of home. Not twenty leagues off is the Rio Grande. To-morrow's breakfast, if all goes as well as it has gone, will be eaten on its banks. This rancho has, therefore, a value above itself; as a guide-post near your native village, when returning thither, is far more than cross-beams and common letters. It glows with a glory and a beauty not its own. I am getting to like ranchos. This Rancho de Villa de General Trevina, despite its big name, is very cordial. The dinner is good, service amiable, tea fuerte, and the bed lies provokingly near, in nice white sheets, too nice and white for this dust-covered form, saying, "Come and rest."

The day broke on me well out of the gardens and grandeurs of Monterey. Three hours I slept, while the sick mules ran out of that paradise, and regained outwardly and inwardly Paradise lost. A thick mist hung around the few low hills, reminiscences of the tall Sierra Madre. The mist was sticky and ocean-like, and I fancied it had come up from the Gulf to escort me thither. It would