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 Rh he was guilty of having meditated the most culpable homicide. For my part they looked to me far too much like distant family connections, to allow me for an instant to harbour the wish of taking away their lives.

The church of Tlacolula, a dingy stone structure, stands prominently in the middle of the valley.

These Indian villages, though they have ostensibly the power of self-government in matters relating to themselves, as the alcades and other petty functionaries are appointed from the inhabitants, are in fact governed by the priest, who here, as elsewhere, is of the mixed race; and a fiery, fagot-bearing, heretic-hating, determined, beetle-browed clerk, we found the Cura of Tlacolula to be. I thought him very much inclined to act the inquisitor with us, till he discovered that we were extremely inoffensive and civilly inclined, and able to furnish him with a bonus of percussion caps, which he greedily coveted and obtained, after which he gave us his blessing, and left us to pass the night in peace.

So far we had come without any great degree of trouble, or any more serious contretems than such as we might well have expected. Our preconceived good opinion of Espindola had never been shaken for an instant; and our respect for and our confidence in him grew day by day. His mules, though of various tempers, were strong and good, and did their work well. He generally led the youngest and giddiest by the lasso, and the rest followed in their order. The art of packing a mule is quite a science; and it was singular to see, how, after the first day's trial—when the trial was made, which of the heterogeneous and multiform objects composing our baggage would ride best in company, or were

There exists more than one mode of reaching the village of Tlacolula from Tarapico; and I am inclined to think a yet shorter than that described, viz., by Los Huevas, the village of Tantayanca and La Pesca, which, by the calculation of the author of "Notes on Mexico," brings you here in seven days, and after a journey of fifty-three leagues.

We had been up to this evening also seven days on the road from Tampico Alta, and had come, by our arriero's computation, fifty-nine leagues. But our object was to go the most picturesque road, and that we undoubtedly did.