our letter of introduction was not a mere complimentary affair. There is not even a village there; it is only a great hacienda, belonging to the Company, with the huts of the workmen built near it. The Company, represented by Mr. Bell, received us with the greatest hospitality. Almost before the letter was opened our horses and mozo were off to the stables, our room was ready, and our dinner being prepared as fast as might be. What a pleasant evening we had, after our long day’s work! We had a great wood-fire, and sat by it, talking and looking at Mr. Bell’s photographs and minerals, which serve as an amusement in his leisure-hours. The Company’s Administrador leads rather a peculiar life here. There is no want of work or responsibility; he has two or three hundred Indians to manage, almost all of whom will steal and cheat without the slightest scruple, if they can but get a chance; he has to assay the ores, superintend a variety of processes which require the greatest skill and judgment, and he is in charge of property to the value of several hundred thousand pounds. Then a man must have a constitution of iron to live in a place where the air is so rarefied, and where the temperature varies thirty and forty degrees between morning and noon. As for society, he must find it in his own family; for even the better class of Mexicans are on so different a level, intellectually, from an educated Englishman, that their society bores him utterly, and he had rather be left in solitude than have to talk to them. Well, it is a great advantage to travellers that circumstances fix pleasant people in such out-of-the-way places.
One necessary part of a hacienda is a church. The proprietors are compelled by law to build one, and pay the priest’s fees for mass on Sundays and feast-days. Now, almost all the English one meets with engaged in business, or managing mines and plantations, are Scotch, and one may well suppose that there is not much love lost between them and the priests. The father confessor plays an important part in the great system of dishonesty that prevails to so monstrous an extent throughout the country. He hears the particulars of the thefts and cheatings that have