Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 2.djvu/24

4 further on, they are frightfully rent asunder, and it requires steady nerves and firm footing to approach their overhanging summits with impunity. Such stupendous scenery has great attraction for the traveller, and a lover of Nature might gaze upon it for hours together, in wondering admiration;—the arriero, however, does not yield to the temptation, but casts one curious glance in its direction and turns away;—his mission impels him onward.

But there is something in the shadow of that rock, beside the narrow path, towards which he gazes with a shudder, urging his unconscious mule to a quicker pace. It is a rudely sculptured cross erected upon a small heap of stones, and it marks the spot where the corpse of a murdered arriero was not long ago discovered: there are several other mementos of the same kind in the vicinity. So frequent have the wayside murders been in the mountain-passes and solitary places of this country, that such roads are literally lined with crosses; and on one journey, for a short distance among the mountains, you may count these melancholy memorials of crime by hundreds. Our carrier does well, therefore, to press forward from such a dangerous neighbourhood.