III.
TO GUANAJUATO.
A bad Beginning.—A level Sea.—Celaya.—A Cactus Tent.—Salamanca.—Irapuato.—Entrance to Guanajuato.—Gleaning Silver.—The Hide-and-go-seek City.—A Revelation.
I have had two real panics since my arrival in this country, both short and severe. The first was the night of my reaching Mexico; the last, the night of my leaving Queretaro. Both were groundless; but so was Mr. Parrish's scare in North Salem, almost two hundred years ago, about witches, if he was scared at all, which is doubtful, there being good reasons for believing he was simply carried away by revenge in a church quarrel. That scare has given the enemies of Massachusetts a good stick to beat her with from that day to this, and faithfully has it been used.
My first scare was caused by the horrors on which I was fed from New York to the capital. I was told that I must go under a feigned name, or I would be poisoned, stilettoed, kidnaped, robbed. This is an anticlimax, but a true one to some souls, loss of money being to them the greatest loss. I found on my arrival at Mexico that one minister, not being well, thought that he was poisoned by the Jesuits, and was urged to have a private room and an American or English cook. I took a room in a hotel rented by a Jesuit priest, his father owning it, and went to bed. The room was very large, the bed very small. The farthing candle did not throw its beams very far, and only made darkness visible. Lonely, weary, heart-sick, homesick, I was in a good state for the panic to strike; and it struck. For some minutes I rolled in the trough of the sea of fear. All its waves and its billows went over me. "Then called I on the name of the Lord; oh Lord, I beseech thee, deliver
