Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/112

106  after morning I directed my glass to him, but no perceptible vapour dimmed the clear silver outline of his snowy summit. He was at rest, and he may perhaps sleep for ages.



had not been many days in the city of Mexico, when we made the discovery, that notwithstanding the excellent letters of introduction with which we had been furnished in Europe and the United States—as far as the natives of the country were concerned, we should have to be the contrivers of our own amusements.

It is true, our calls were returned and our cards acknowledged. We exchanged compliments; bartered bows, polite speeches, and grateful acknowledgments, for the boiling-hot, rapturous expressions of ecstasy of our Mexican acquaintances, at the unlooked-for happiness of seeing us in this world. We smiled in delight, in the very extremity of gratitude, at the devotion with which the palaces, the horses, the very lives of our noble male friends, were seemingly placed at our command without any reserve.

It appeared as if every other duty or pleasure was to be relinquished for the felicity of cultivating our friendship. We received a thousand compliments, which the gayest of our European admirers never had the wit to conceive, or the effrontery to utter. On one or two occasions, we had the ecstasy of presenting a comely black-eyed dama or signorita with a balmy cigarita; and of receiving it again from her delicate hand, after it had been consecrated by a preliminary whiff.

And how then?— why, after the first interview some of the most impassioned of our acquaintances were never again heard of. Others evidently kept out of our way. Two or three who had travelled in Europe were again 