Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/435

Rh the plaza in front of the hall in which we read the records, and whipped them most unmercifully to compel them to reveal the locality of the mine. The Indians bore the torture in grim silence, and next day twenty thousand of them, including all who knew the secret, left for Guatamala, and the locality of the placer remains undiscovered to this day.

The same thing is now going on in a district between Puebla and Tuxpan. The Indians are bringing in, from time to time, quantities of gold dust, for sale, at a small town near which has been recently discovered the ruins of an ancient city. They also brought in a box of stones which have been pronounced diamonds of the first water, by the jewelers of Mexico, but refused to tell where the gold and stones came from. It is suspected that they came from the ruins, and a party of my personal friends are now being fitted out in the city of Mexico, to go and make a thorough exploration of the locality.

The Virgin of Guadaloupe has a rival in this locality, in the Virgin who has a church on the hill above the city of Tlaxcala. It is said that the Bishop of Tlaxcala being pursued at night, by his enemies and the enemies of the Faith, saw the Virgin among the limbs of a pine-tree, and just at the moment of his direst extremity, the trunk of the tree flew open, and shutting again like the trap-door in a pantomime, enclosed him within it. The enemy ran past without discovering his whereabouts, or, what is more singular, noticing the luminous Virgin roosting in the tree overhead, and the tree, opening again, let him out in safety. Of course this miracle could not be kept secret, and the church which was erected on the spot, rivals that of