Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/274

246 —and before he could reach the bottom, he was a crushed and mangled corpse. His late comrade returned to the spot where he fell; glanced for a moment at the body as it lay beneath; and then, without betraying the slightest emotion or compunction, hurried on his way, and arrived in due time before the city gates.

Little as he suspected it, however, and unfrequent as detection is in this country, Sanchez had been watched by an arriero on the same route, from the moment of his returning to the precipice; and was in consequence apprehended immediately on his arrival. The particulars here related were elicited in the course of his examination before the administradores, which ended by the prisoner being remanded for further examination.

The next case that claimed the attention of the magistrates was a truly pitiable one. The prisoner was a miserably feeble object, scarcely covered by fluttering many coloured rags, and his sunken face was almost blackened by heat and excessive exposure to the weather. The accusation against him was two-fold,—he had feloniously introduced himself, a foreigner, into the country, without license, or carta del seguridad; and, having subsisted in a