Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/89

Rh the glory of the scene before me. The darkness was almost palpable to the touch, and I began to fear that the party must encamp on the mountains for the night. Suddenly, the notes of the bugle came floating through the air, and a long line of brilliant lights, moving with a steady motion which showed that they were carried by marching men, came out upon the hill-side some miles away.

Like a great fiery serpent the column, with its hundred torches unfolded itself, and crept steadily toward the hacienda. On it came, winding and turning with the sinuosities of the road, until I could discern the outlines of the horsemen who bore the flaming torches, and see the great-leaved trees come in and out of the panorama of ever-shifting lights and shadows, as the column moved along. It was a scene of enchantment which seems too much like the work of imagination to be real, even now, as I look back upon it through memory's gateway.

At last the procession entered the patio, and all was bustle and confusion for an hour or more before the troops were finally quartered for the night, the baggage disposed of, and the party quietly provided for in the various rooms of the great house. The, family of the proprietor, Mauricio Gomez, reside most of the time at Zapotlan, and were not at the hacienda when we were there. We supped royally, slept soundly—there are no musquitoes, and very few flies in all this country—and at 6, on the 15th were off for Zapotlan, our road leading for miles between the rice-fields, sugar-cane and corn-fields which covered the whole country.

Soon after leaving San Marcos we came to the main branch of the great Barranca de Beltran, which is about