daring, and the next stage being very dangerous, our escort was to be doubled. Since we left Perote, the country had gradually become more dreary, and we had again got into the "mal pais," where nothing is to be seen but a few fir trees and pines, dark and stunted, black masses of lava, and an occasional, white cross to mark either where a murder has been committed, or where a celebrated robber has been buried. Of each, Don Miguel gave us a succinct account. Some lines of Childe Harold suit this scene as if written for it:
"And here and there, as up the crags you spring,
Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path:
Yet deem not these devotion's offering—
These are memorials frail of murderous wrath,
For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath
Pour'd forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife
Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath;
And grove and glen with thousand such are rife,
Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life."
The whole scene was wild and grand, yet dreary and monotonous, presenting the greatest contrast possible to our first day's journey. The only signs of life to be met with, were the long strings of arrieros with their droves of mules, and an occasional Indian hut, with a few miserable half-naked women and children.
At one small, wild-looking inn, where, very cold and miserable, we stopped, some hot wine was brought us, which was very acceptable. The tavern keeper, for it was no more than a spirit-shop, if not a robber, had all the appearance of one; wild, melancholy, and with a most sinister expression of counte-
