104 



A Buffalo Hunt in Northern Mexico. 



mortification, a disease with all over-proud souls. Gonzales Herrera, 

 a brutal ranchero, assumed the estate by right of conquest, and sup- 

 planted the unquestioning hospitality of the proprietor with an out- 



JUAN. 



lawry strong enough to defy the state, backed by the national 

 government. 



To the door of this sadly haunted dwelling in the wilderness we 

 drove, the evening of an October day in the year 1867. The party 



consisted of Colonel C , an American ; Mr. Roth, a German ; 



myself, and three mozos, — that is to say, three native Mexicans, chat- 

 tels of his excellency Don Andreas Viesca, governor of the State of 

 Coahuila — brave men, true, honest, affectionate, at home on the 

 highways of the desert, and brimful of experience derived from life- 

 long pilotage to and fro on all the beaten marches of Northern 

 Mexico. Juan, Teodora, and Santos, — only their baptismals are 

 given, as in the sister republic nobody troubles about the surname of 

 a peon. Of the trio, the first was our coachman, and the second our 



