86 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



tie personal interest in watching them closely ; for, 

 should Santa Ana regain the ascendancy, the cli- 

 mate would be altogether too warm for him. He 

 had saddle and bridle, sword and pistols — all that he 

 needed except a horse — hanging up in his room, and 

 at a moment's notice he was ready to mount and 

 ride. 



Our meeting with this gentleman added much to 

 the interest of our time in Merida. In the evening, 

 when we had settled the affairs of Yucatan, we made 

 an excursion into Illyria or the interior of Turkey. 

 He was as familiar with the little towns in those 

 countries as with those in Mexico. His knowledge 

 of persons and places, derived from actual observa- 

 tion, was most extensive ; in short, his whole life 

 had been a chapter of incidents and adventures; 

 and these were not yet ended. He had a new field 

 opened to him in Yucatan. We parted with him 

 in Merida, and the next that we heard of him was 

 of his being in a situation quite as strange as any he 

 had ever been in before. Yet there was nothing 

 reckless, restless, or unsettled about him ; he was 

 perfectly fixed and methodical in all his notions and 

 modes of action ; in Wall-street he would be con- 

 sidered a staid, regular, quiet, middle-aged man, and 

 he was systematic enough in his habits to be head 

 director of the Bank of England. 



I must not omit to mention, among those whom 

 we were in the habit of seeing every day, another 

 old acquaintance, of the Spanish Hotel in Fulton- 



