Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/227



E had been told that we should find a revolution in full blast at Querataro, and everything in confusion. Instead, we found every thing going on in clock work order, peace, apparent contentment, and comparative prosperity. The Governor, it is true, having quarreled with the Legislature or State Congress, had been impeached, and was then in the city of Mexico, awaiting trial before Congress; but the Gefe Politico, Señor Angel Dueñas, and other officers, were conducting business with regularity in his absence.

We found the City and State officials, ready with carriages at the gates to receive the party. The city contains forty thousand people, and though far less important, commercially, than it once was, is still reckoned a wealthy one. It has schools, churches, and historic localities enough to occupy one's attention for a week; but as we had only a day and a half to devote to it, we decided to spend the first half-day in visiting the great factory which, in fact, supports the town; then devote all the following day to the scenes of interest connected with the siege, and the capture and death of Maximilian.

"We rode at once out of the City to the north-west, past a long aqueduct carried across the valley on high stone arches, the whole work having cost a million