204 MEXICO. 
reluctant farewell to our kind entertainer, we mounted and turned our 
faces northward, toward our home. 
A wide plain skirts the foot of the sierra that hems in the Valley of 
Mexico, and runs from the valley of Cuautla into that of Puebla. Over 
it lay our road this afternoon, and after passing one of those strange and 
deep barrancas, down which plunged a cascade of clear water for some 
two hundred feet, we commenced the ascent of the range of mountains 
forming the last barrier between us and the Capital. 
Scarcely had we mounted the hills, when it began to rain for the first 
time, during the day? since we left Cuernavaca, and I experienced imme- 
diately a remarkable change in the temperature, from the scorching heat 
in the square of Cuautla. Our scrapes were at once put on, and we wore 
them for the rest of the evening. 
Santa Inez is on the limit of the tierra caliente ; — at five or six miles 
distance the culture of the sugar cane ceases, and the tierra templada 
commences. 
We passed the beautiful Indian- village of Acaclauca, with its green 
leaves, chapels, and churches, in front of one of which I saw the last tall 
group of palm-trees, standing out with their featherj'^ branches relieved 
against the snow of Popocatepetl. It was a strange picture, mingling in 
one frame the tropic and the pole. 
Near eight o'clock the distant barking of dogs announced our approach 
to the village where we designed resting until morning. Small fires 
were lighted before each door, and by their light we meandered through 
half a dozen crooked and hilly streets before we reached the house of the 
worthy Don Juan Gonzales, (an old friend of the Consul,) who, at a mo- 
ment's notice, received us under his hospitable roof. 
Don Juan is a man " well to do" in the world of his little village ; — he 
keeps store, rents a room to a club of village folks, who like a drop of 
aguardiente or a quiet game of 7nont^ ; and, above all, has the loveliest 
girl in the tierra templada for a daughter. 
Don Juan ushered us ceremoniously into his long, low, back parlor. 
In one corner stood a picture of the Virgin with a lamp burning before it, 
while opposite was a table around which were gathered five of the neigh- 
bors in shirt sleeves, slouched hats, and beards of a week's growth, busy 
with a game of greasy cards, in the light of a dim "tallow." Ever and 
anon, the little sylph of a daughter brought in the liquor for the boors. 
It was Titania and Bottom — Ariel and the Clown, and I longed for the 
pencil of Caravaggio to sketch the gamblers, or of Retzsch to embody the 
whole spirit of the scene. 
After a frugal supper of tortillas and chocolate, we retired to feather 
beds and clean sheets on the floor, — but I was glad when we were called 
to horse at three in the morning. It had been a night of sore encounter ; 
an army of fleas attacked us, the moment we retired, with a vigor and 
earnestness that did justice both to their appetite and our blood. 
