Two hours of such slow and steadfast climbing bring the feudal cavalcade to the Real Castle, or the Castle of the Real.
Here a yet more feudal incident increases the delusion. We draw up to a high, huge dead wall without a window. The gate opens, and we enter. The warder draws near and makes his obeisance to the conductor, a gracious action on the part of each. A low room, not loftier than those usually seen in the ruined castles of the Rhine, welcomes us, and refreshments are served up. The company then proceed to inspect the castle. They kept saying to each other, "How completely feudal!" "Was there ever any thing more perfect?" "This is the real article." "As it should be on the Real," keeps up the execrable punster.
At the entrance of the building proper is a well with a windlass over it. To the ropes of this windlass were attached pieces of maguey or hemp sack, a quarter of a yard wide, made into a sort of seat. In this seat sat the workmen, and, clinging to the rope, were let down ten or twelve hundred feet, "poco mas y menos" as they all say here to every thing ("a little more or less)." They are let down and dragged up every day.
Still fancying I had entered a castle, and a little bewildered by this mode of treating its inmates, I was led to a court with rooms long and wide opening out of it, and long benches stretching on either side against the walls, which had that horrid odor that belongs to the wards of a prison, and which is unlike any other smell. Another step, and a barred door, heavy and thick, made of cross-pieces that let in the light and air, but not liberty, revealed the fact that this mediæval castle was indeed a prison. So its looks did not deceive itself. That well was to let down criminals to work in the mines.
It took off the edge of our vanity a little to learn this fact. The castle is reduced in vocation, though not in manners. Don Quixote can fancy it a castle, though it be only a presidio. Those straps of maguey fibre, in which they were let down that thousand feet, were homeopathic in their nature. Pulqui brought them here, and the fibre of its leaf drops them there. I had seen pits like this in
