54 



TLACOLULA. 



Four or five leagues from the entrance of the gorge* 

 the signs of that tremendous convulsion, which has burst 

 this channel through the heart of the mountains, are 

 perfectly bewildering. The thin, laminated strata are 

 broken and twisted in every possible manner ; and the 

 river, which had never failed us in the earlier part of our 

 journey, but had formed an abundant stream flowing in 

 a chain of alternate rapids or lucid pools, was found to 

 have totally disappeared, pursuing for some distance a 

 subterraneous course below the surface. Soon after, 

 however, we found ourselves again on its banks, and 

 early on the afternoon of the first day emerged from the 

 ravine which I have attempted to describe, and ap- 

 proached the great opening, wherein the Indian village 

 of Tlacolula lies surrounded by its orange groves and 

 pretty cultivated enclosures. 



This was by far the most important Indian village we 

 had seen, though perhaps not the largest, and we found 

 that the population was partly engaged in the manufacture 

 of the cotton cloth which serves as a reboso, or veil for 

 the upper part of the person, of the common people 

 throughout Mexico. They are woven in a rudely con- 

 structed loom. 



We here passed a long evening, bathing in the river, 

 examining whatever was curious — among which we 

 may mention a pretty crystal cascade directly opposite 

 our quarters in one of the palmetto-thatched huts of the 

 village — and in arguing whether it was lawful or unlaw- 

 ful to shoot a monkey. Several of these animals, of the 

 long-tailed yellow T and black species, had been descried 

 in the ravine at their avocations, much to our amuse- 

 ment. Pourtales, however, who remembered the de- 

 lights of strange meats — such as skunk, racoon, and 

 prairie dogs on the great prairies, and whose philosophy 

 was anything but Pythagorean or Braminical, had been 

 in a perfect fever for a taste of the long- armed gentry, 

 and I believed had actually fired a shot or two, which 

 the objects of his aim had contrived to dodge. M'Euen 

 and myself took him to task, for to us it appeared that 



