Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/77

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PAINFUL SCENE AT THE CONSULATE.
71

coach with the members of his party, the other coach was filled by our friends, and the people bared their heads and bowed respectfully as a last salutation, as the coaches rattled away over the cobble-paved streets.

The rear-guard and the long pack-train fell in behind, and the police and other officials and friends galloped alongside. Vamos! ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-h-a-a-a! yelled the cocheros; the postilions cracked their whips, and so, with clatter and uproar, and strange music indescribable, we dashed past the Plaza Nuevo, with its triumphal arches, its orange groves and seats for summerevening loungers, out through the long, straight, narrow streets, into the garden-lined roads of the suburbs, and Colima the Beautiful was behind us.

In the last chapter, mention was made of a prisoner in irons in the State Prison awaiting death for a brutal murder. The order for his execution had been signed by Gov. Cueva on the day previous to our departure, and he was to be shot at day-break on that morning. While standing in Consul Morrill's office on the evening before our departure, I heard a terrible outcry in the corridor, and saw the poor old mother of the condemned criminal on her knees before the Consul, begging him in the name of God and all the saints to interfere in her son's behalf. "You represent the- great Estados Unidos del Norte, and are all-powerful. Save him, Señor, and all the saints of heaven will bless you!" He told her as mildly as possible, that he had no power to interfere, and that the young man—a bad youth, who had committed murder before, and on this occasion butchered, in cold blood, a merchant's clerk, who had, under orders from his employer, refused him credit for