Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/92

86 Cheeseman, immediately commanded by Col. Geo. M. Green, if I remember correctly, toward the close of the war.

The stages were not forth-coming, and people who came over the road told us that it was impassable for vehicles for the greater part of the way from Zapotlan to the Barranca owing to the damage done by the recent storm.

An Indian messenger was sent off, on foot, with a promise that if he returned before 4, with news of the stage-coach, he should have two dollars. It was then 2, and we laid down to rest. At five minutes before 4, the barefooted messenger returned with the news that the coach would meet us nine miles down the road, at a point where a great gully had made it impossible to get the vehicle farther. He had made eighteen miles at a run, within the two hours, as was subsequently demonstrated, and well earned his two dollars.

We mounted at once and pushed on, Mr. Seward on a mule led by a half-naked native and holding on by both hands, and met at last the fine, large stage, made by the American pattern in Mexico, sent out from Zapotlan for our accommodation. Here, we were near the summit of the pass through the Sierra Madre, and the country looked not unlike the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada about Grass Valley and Colfax, in California. The chaparral had mostly disappeared, and the country was sparsely covered with stumpy, yellow pines, with long leaves hanging down, so as to give them a weeping-willow aspect. The air at this elevation was quite comfortably cool, and we discarded the thin apparel in which we had sweltered in the Terra Caliente,