APPENDIX, 605 



To the Superioress of the Convent of the Good Shepherd at 



Dalbeth. 



WALTON HALL, Nov. 30, 1853. 



Dear Madam, In your letter of petition, in support of your 

 excellent Institution, you have asked for the crumbs which fall from 

 my table. If a joke may be allowed on a serious subject, I would 

 say in answer, that all the crumbs which fall from my table are 

 mortgaged to a huge Cochin-China fowl, which receives them in 

 payment for awaking me by his crowing every morning at three 

 o'clock. But as he does not feed on my cheese, I find that I can 

 spare a mite from it. Pray accept it ; and if you enter the trifling 

 donation in your book, please put it down as coming from a friend. 

 I always make this stipulation on similar occasions. I remain, dear 

 madam, your obedient humble servant, CHARLES WATERTON. 



Don Velasquez and the mysterious city of Iximaya. 



Velasquez ! " tu, nisi ventis 

 Debes ludibrium, cave." 



Did I not consider the " Illustrated Memoir " sold by Professors 

 Anderson and Morris, as " the baseless fabric of a vision," I should 

 fairly turn pale at the barbarous deeds of their hero Don Velasquez 

 de San Salvador. His unprovoked irruption into a peaceful city, 

 his ruthless slaughter of the unoffending natives, and his cruel 

 robbery, in the persons of the two little Aztec children, who had 

 been guarded there as a sacred treasure, are acts which fill the mind 

 with horror. But to proceed with the adventures of this " man of 

 family and education, though a trader in indigo," as the guardians 

 inform us. 



The ruthless rover, having gained his ends, had nothing now but 

 to rid himself of whatever might jeopardite his "History of Iximaya," 

 hereafter to be offered to a British Public. 



