calling by bringing robbery to the saint for an offering. Poor saint! how much he and his priests have suffered by this wanton interference of the civil government in Church affairs—this prohibition of monté-playing in honor of the festival of San Augustine! There was much in this church to admire, and much of that gold displayed which gamblers are accustomed to lavish upon their idols. It seemed like another worship and another religion from that which I had been accustomed to witness in the humble chapels of the Pintos, in whose country I had so long been wandering.
Again I was in the saddle, and soon upon that noted causeway by which Cortéz entered the city of Mexico. It has lost none of its attractions in the course of centuries, but has been kept in fine repair as a carriage-road, while the venerable trees that line it on either side look as old as the time of the Conquistadors.
This noble carriage-way, through the marshy ground of the valley of Mexico, is an enlargement of the old causeway of the Indians, or, rather, it has been built over and around it, that having been less than thirty feet in width.
I soon arrived at Churubusco, the scene of one of the bloody battles of the American campaign in this valley. There was little here to look at, and I hurried on and entered the south gate of the city, and soon arrived at the Hôtel de Paris, to which I had been directed.
My poor old mustang here ended a twelve days' journey, over mountains and plains of pedregal, without a shoe to his hoofs.
A party of Californians, who had been stopping here for some weeks, had left the day before, and I was ushered into French society, in which to form my first impressions of Mexico. Still, there was an exquisite pleasure in once more getting clean, and eating food cooked after a civilized manner. Not that I had in any wise become tired of drinking