but the eighth, who happened to be a cripple, lived in the convent. A major in the guard was pointed out to me, who, having committed a murder, took sanctuary in the church, where he remained several days, when—and we have his own word for it—the Virgin Mary appeared to him and freely forgave him. On this news getting abroad, there was great rejoicing in Tezcuco that the Virgin had at last visited them. From being stigmatized as a murderer, the object of this visit was almost adored as a saint, and became one of the principal men of the village, and was created a major in the new corps.
After I had surveyed the salt-works and the glassworks, I turned my horse's head toward Mexico by the road along the eastern shore, so that I made the complete circuit of Lake Tezcuco.
Thus far my visit to the royal city of Tezcuco had been perfectly successful, except in the attempts made to convince the young Englishman that I was not a dead-shot with the rifle; and I started home with a slight shade upon my veracity for denying my ability to pierce the centre of the bull's-eye. But otherwise it was a disagreeable parting to all of us. As I returned by the east side of the lake, the splendid high farming-lands that extend from the shore to the foot of the mountain were strikingly in contrast with the flatness and barrenness of the plain on the water-side, which is so slightly elevated above the level of the salt water that a few inches of rise in the laguna spreads out an immense sheet of saline water, and yet there is not a solitary evaporating vat where there is an unlimited demand for the evaporated article at fourteen shillings the aroba.
Cortéz speaks of the fine fields of corn on the east side of the lake. But they could not have been finer in his day than they are at present, though they furnished him with the supplies that supported his army. I reached the head of Tezcuco at noontide, where the heavy water of the salt lake was driving up toward the fresh water, as described by Cortéz, but it was under the pressure of a strong north wind.