Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/494

486 boy as guide to the ruins, and it requires equally hard work to find a horse. But one's energies are taxed to the utmost to keep away the horde of ragged juveniles, who appear with sacks full of clay heads, obsidian knives, and curious candeleros, which they insist upon your buying. Travellers have wondered, as we wonder to-day, at the unlimited supply of these "antiquities," as the fields are actually full of them, and we discovered many as we rode over them on our horses, and many others we bargained for with the natives.

My next visit to the valley's brim was to Tezcoco, the ancient seat of learning,—the "Athens of Anahuac,"—situated across the lake of the same name from Mexico City, some ten miles in a direct line, but nearly thirty by the travelled road. My companions on this occasion were the Rev. J. W. Butler, Methodist missionary to Mexico, and Mr. T. U. Brocklehurst, an English gentleman, who was also with me at Teotihuacan, and who has since written a very instructive book of travels.

Our mission was to rescue an imprisoned native preacher who had been unjustly incarcerated. Him we found in jail, an elderly Indian, with as mild a countenance as it is possible for one of these natives to have. He had but one eye, and those who were instrumental in having him placed in durance vile had taken advantage of this fact to creep up, as he was riding along one day, and shoot at him from his blind side; failing in their object, they hastened off and lodged a complaint against him—for not allowing himself to be shot decently and in order! He never had carried a fire-arm of any kind in his life, he told us; but there he was, securely caged, and some of his parishioners slept before the door of the jail every night lest he might be taken away and never heard of again. The upshot of it was, that he lay in prison three weeks longer, and was then released on a promise that he would be more accommodating when shot at another time by good and faithful Catholics. Notwithstanding we read that the South Sea Islanders have discontinued the practice of eating the missionary, since the reported discovery of trichinæ in some of them, the Mexican hunter is not to be deterred by any such canard. He does not hunt a