rum made from the sugar-cane, but not coloured like that which comes to England. The men are continually rushing backwards and forwards among their beasts, which are not content with kicking and biting, and banging against one another, but are always trying to lie down in the road; and one of the principal duties of the arriero is constantly to keep an eye on all his beasts at once, and, when he sees one preparing to lie down, to be beforehand with him, and drive him on by a furious shower of blows, kicks, and curses. Certainly, the Mexican mules are the finest and strongest in the world; and, though they are just as obstinate here as elsewhere, they are worth two or three times as much as horses.
Our road lies through a forest of pines and oaks, which reaches to the summit of the pass, where stands a wretched little village, La Guarda. There we had a thoroughly Mexican breakfast, with pulque in tall tumblers, and endless successions of tortillas, coming in hot and hot from the kitchen, where we could see brown women with bare arms, and black hair plaited in long tails, kneeling by the charcoal fire, and industriously patting out fresh supplies, and baking them rapidly on a hot plate. The pièce de résistance was a stew, bright red with tomatas, and hot as fire with chile; and then came the frijoles—the black beans—without which no Mexican, high or low, considers a meal complete. The walls of the room were decorated with highly coloured engravings, one of which represented an engagement between a Spanish and an English fleet, in which the English ships are being boarded by the victorious Spaniards, or are being blown up in the background. Where the engagement was I cannot recollect. People in Mexico, to whom I mentioned this remarkable historical event, assured me that there are still to be seen pictures of the destruction of the English fleet by the French and Spaniards in the Bay of Trafalgar!
Mexico was always, until the establishment of the republic, profoundly ignorant of European affairs. In the old times, when the intercourse with