Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/56



T was 2 o'clock in the morning,on Monday, October 11th, when we entered Colima. We swallowed a hasty lunch, and retired to bed just as the watchmen, whom we had noticed sitting along the sidewalk, with muskets in their hands, and great oil-fed lanterns by their sides, blew all their whistles, and, as with one voice, drawled out the hour, "3 o'clock in the morning, and all quiet," (in Spanish,) a proceeding totally unnecessary, as the Cathedral and different church bells all strike the hours, and in fact give the cue to the watchmen, none of whom have anything like a time-piece of their own. It seemed as if we had just closed our eyes in welcome sleep, when the air was filled with shrill and piercing music, the sharp rattle of the kettle-drum, and the blare of trumpets.

Awake in an instant, I listened in doubt, and for some minutes I tried vainly, to decide where I was and to what I listened. The music was such as enlivened the march of Cortez and Pizarro, and their companions, when they came to spread desolation and the religion of the cross, through peaceful and unoffending lands, but the air must have been centuries older: if it resembled anything originating since the flood, it was "The White Cockade."

I looked down at the bed, with its crimson and fringed