22 MEXICO. 
came bounding beside the coach along the level and almost trackless 
plain. I never saw half so frightened a man as our coachman, especially 
when we passed the spot where he had been wounded. Every shrub was 
a robber — and a maguey of decent size was a whole troop ! 
The early morning, from the rain which had fallen during the night 
on this portion of the plain, Avas as cold and raw as November at home ; 
nor was it until an hour after sunrise that the mists peeled off from the 
lowlands, and, folding themselves around the distant hills, revealed a 
prospect as bare and dreary as the Campagna of Rome. 
