pilgrimage in a quagmire; but in time we were again upon the road. It is a dreary place about the hill of Tepeyaca, or Guadalupe, and if the Virgin had not smiled upon the barren hill and made roses grow out of it, it would be as uninviting as one of the hills of the valley of Sodom. This hill is now called the "Mountain of Crosses," for upon it, in 1810, the first insurgent, Hidalgo, the priest of Dolores, won a battle against the royal troops, which should have been followed up by an entry into Mexico; but Providence ordered it otherwise, and the forest of crosses that once covered it proclaimed a bloody slaughter without any results.
The shores of Tezcuco approach the hill in the wet season, leaving but a narrow margin for the road, but in the dry season this margin is greatly enlarged. I have already explained the composition of tequisquite, and the manner of its production; here it was lying in courses, or spots, as it had been left by the receding and drying up of the water during the present dry season. Little piles of it had been gathered up here and there to be taken to