These military commissions are no new invention in Mexico, for that famous Count de Galvez, the Vice-king who built the castle of Chapultepec and deposed the Archbishop of Mexico, had a traveling military court, with chaplain and all spiritual aids, to accompany the dragoons that scoured the road in search of robbers. When a fellow was caught, court, chaplains, and dragoons made rapid work in dismissing him to his long resting-place, and saying a cheap mass for the repose of his soul, and then again they were ready for another enterprise. In this way the roads were made safe in the times of that Viceroy.
Had I known the real distance to Tezcuco, I ought to have abandoned the journey on account of the lameness of my horse. But either the Virgin Mary, or, more probably, the extreme purity of the atmosphere on these elevated plains, had deprived me of the power of measuring distance by the eye. This is excessively annoying to a traveler. He sees the object he is attempting to approach at an apparently moderate distance, plain in sight, and as he rides along, hour after hour, there it stands, just where it seemed to be when he first got sight of it. I finally reached my destination in good time for a dinner, and for as good a night's "entertainment for man and beast" as could be found in all the Republic of Mexico.
When I turned the head of the lake, I was close upon the track which Cortéz and his retreating band followed into the plains of Otumba. Poor wretches! what a time they must have had of it in this disconsolate retreat—wounded, jaded, like tigers bereft of their prey! They mourned for their companions slain, but most of all for the booty they had lost.
"They grieved for those that went down in the cutter,
And also for the biscuits and the butter:"