Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/555

Rh so many long days and nights, and to which I had become devotedly attached, he embraced me with all the affection of a brother, and wished me God speed on my journey. He was a type of the true and trusty guide of Mexico; may he long survive to guide other travellers where I have been!

To one who has travelled for nearly two months with no other means of transportation than mules and horses, the sight of a railroad is most refreshing. Even if he make what may be called a Mexican connection,—that is, find himself just twenty-two hours late for the train,—he has consolation in the fact that he is again in a portion of the country where a train runs at stated intervals, even though but once a day. I had been in the saddle, previous to reaching the station of Esperanza, for sixteen days; in the last three, had ridden one hundred and seventy miles, sixty in the last day, and had reached the railroad in a state of exhaustion and fever, for which the great heat of the southern valleys, in violent contrast to the cold of the high plateaux, was mainly responsible.

Two months previously I had left Cordova for Southern Mexico, taking with me but little luggage, as the travel was to be on horseback, and had left nearly all my effects with a worthy man whose acquaintance I had made but a few days before. At that