sweeping and mending the streets. This is a punishment much approved of by the Mexican authorities, as combining terror to evil-doers with advantage to the community. That it puts all criminals on a level, from murderers down to vagrants, does not seem to be considered as a matter of much consequence.
At the city-gate stands a sentry—the strangest thing I ever saw in the guise of a soldier—a brown Indian of the coast, dressed in some rags that were a uniform once, shoeless, filthy in the extreme, and armed with an amazing old flint-lock. He is bad enough to look at, in all conscience, and really worse than he looks, for—no doubt—he has been pressed into the service against his will, and hates white men and their ways with all his heart. Of course he will run away when he gets a chance; and, though he will be no great loss to the service, he will add his mite to the feeling of hatred that has been growing up for these so many years among the brown Indians against the whites and the half-cast Mexicans. But more of this hereafter.