over the wheat plat, yet arise from their hovels into comely homes, and be all beautiful in condition as in possibility?
It is a long following of a dry river-bed, crossing and recrossing its loose rocks many times under a sultry sun, before we strike a rattling brook of delightful water, and a hill-side that looked as if covered with an apple-orchard, and must certainly reveal a white house amidst its green foliage. It is a nopal, or cactus, orchard, and no white cottage glimmers among its leather lapstone-shaped leaves, but only the same adobe hut, the same half-naked women, three-fourths naked men, seven-eighths naked youths, and entirely naked children, all sitting on the bare ground in poverty and degradation extreme, yet as courteous and kindly as the princeliest soul in the princeliest palace.
We pass through this nopal-orchard, with its many-tinted blossoms and small egg-like fruit, and emerge on a wide plain. Our steps have turned a little too far to the south. A kindly-voiced native, neatly dressed in white, with a blue girdle about his loins, gives us directions, and our untired horses step away, sobre passo, or the "overstep," the favorite pace of long day traveling. Another rancho is traversed of like disgust and like courtesy; a high, hot, shadeless hill is mounted; a hotter cañon crossed; another long plain traversed; another rancho, with its organ-cactus walls, is entered and left; a long stretch of open upland paced over. The "cinquo leguas " (five leagues), gradually diminishes to "quatuor, tres, dos y medio" (two and a half) or " dos, mas y menos " (two, more or less), where it hangs a long while. At last an adobe cottage close to a waterless river-bed is reached, whose pretty maidenly girl says it is "una legua" (one league). For that information, as well as for her pretty ways and name (Arabella it was), and for the abundant and cooling water she gave us, we responded with milie gracias (a thousand thanks), the débris of our dinner, and a medio. Which of the three prized she the most, think you? A miss of fourteen would not hold the medio in chief esteem. That her mother prefers, and she the cakes and compliments. Suum cuique. Each gets her own, and all of us are satisfied.
