Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/283

Rh banish all these revolting impressions from my mind.

Subsequently meeting this official from the Accordada; I inquired the cause of such awful appearances. With an indignant look and a fierce stamp upon the ground, he assured me that the persons I had noticed were the victims of vitriol-throwers—infamous wretches who thus prosecute their schemes of vengeance and malignity! He told me the crime was a very common one in the republic, and that the most cunning contrivances were resorted to by the miscreants, to insure the utter destruction of their victims' features. Vitriol, he said; had been poured, by demons in human form, even upon the faces of sleeping children and the countenances of vigorous men and beautiful women had been actually burned away by its repeated application: wretches had thus wreaked their malice upon those whom they considered enemies.

A most heinous case of this description he related, as having himself witnessed its results. It is almost too horrible for recollection; but I must not shrink from alluding to what is unhappily too characteristic of the lowest classes of the Mexican community.