Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/49

 Rh La Messa, situated on a commanding eminence, at the edge of prairie country alluded to, and overlooking, to the south, a deep glen full of wood, and a far-stretching expanse of roundish hills covered with luxuriant vegetation.

In the absence of more regular places of entertainment, the custom of the country authorizes the traveller to make his halt with his retinue at the first farm which may suit his convenience; and though the hacienda is in general the country residence of a rich and wealthy proprietor, we felt no scruple in dismounting and asking shelter and provender for ourselves and our party.

And here I have to record one of those strange rencounters which the Rambler has sometimes to note upon his tablets in utter amazement how they are brought about.

On riding round the corner of one of the principal buildings, what was my surprise to see my friend Pour-tales folded in the embrace of a huge brawny young Mexican—and yet greater to find, on dismounting, that I was to be honoured with a fraternal squeeze from the same arms, before I could see what face there might possibly be appended to them. I was not long, however, in recognising in the athletic, sunburnt young man, who thus welcomed us to his home, a certain smooth-faced, ungainly stripling, who had been our fellow-passenger two years before, in the New York packet, from Havre de Grace to America. He had been sent from Mexico to Paris, to be instructed in the language, literature, and manners of the politest country in Europe; and, at that epoch, having finished his term of education was returning with his bundle of acquisitions, to enlighten his benighted countrymen. On shipboard, where he was generally known by a singular sobriquet bestowed on him by my light-minded companion, namely, "Amiable et execrable Tampico," we had of course made acquaintance. We found that he had learned to eat with a knife and fork, to dress like a civilized man, to talk a little bad French; to dance, and to play the monkey, which he did á merveille, clumsily aping