70 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



seen in the position of land-owner and master. He 

 was about forty-five years old, and highly respecta- 

 ble in his appearance and manners. He had inher- 

 ited the land from his fathers, did not knov^ how 

 long it had been transmitted, but believed that it had 

 always been in his family. The Indians on the 

 rancho were his servants, and we had not seen in any 

 village or on any hacienda men of better appear- 

 ance, or under more excellent discipline. This pro- 

 duced on my mind a strong impression that, indolent, 

 ignorant, and debased as the race is under the do- 

 minion of strangers, the Indian even now is not inca- 

 pable of fulfilhng the obligations of a higher station 

 than that in which his destiny has placed him. It 

 is not true that he is fit only to labour with his 

 hands ; he has within him that which is capable of 

 directing the labour of others ; and as this Indian 

 master sat on the terrace, with his dependants 

 crouching round him, I could imagine him the de- 

 scendant of a long line of caciques who once 

 reigned in the city, the ruins of which were his in- 

 heritance. Involuntarily we treated him with a re- 

 spect we had never shown to an Indian before ; but 

 perhaps we were not free from the influence of 

 feelings which govern in civilized life, and our re- 

 spect may have proceeded from the discovery that 

 our new acquaintance was a man of property, pos- 

 sessed not merely of acres, and Indians, and unpro- 

 ductive real estate, but also of that great desidera- 

 tum in these trying times, ready money ; for we had 



