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MEXICO. 



to have a new and ready listener. He showed m& 

 the plans and sections of his mines^ and the let- , 

 ters of his agents, by which, though unacquainted 

 with the subject, I saw at a single glance that he 

 was their dupe : but it would have been an ungra- 

 cious, and I suspect, a vain attempt, to have tried 

 to make him sensible of this. He possessed con- 

 siderable knowledge of the habits of the lower 

 classes, and, as I found much pleasure in his con- 

 versation on this account, I was frequently in his 

 house. The intimacy which sprung up between 

 us, I have no doubt, contributed essentially to 

 the quiet which we enjoyed at San Bias : and I 

 encouraged it more than I might otherwise have 

 done, from a conviction, that if we had got into 

 any scrape, no one could have extricated us so 

 well as this good father. There was something, 

 also, very primitive in his credulity ; a sort of 

 childish and amiable simplicity, which rendered it 

 impossible to listen without compassion to his wild 

 stories of the miracles he had actually seen per- 

 formed before his eyes, chiefly by Nuestra Senora 

 de Talpa, his favourite saint. He was but too 

 fair a subject for the mining charlatans, who 

 abound in all those countries, and I greatly fear 



