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THE STORY OF MEXICO

a wound in the leg, which made it necessary to amputate it, and afterwards he always wore a wooden leg. Mexico in the end consented to make a treaty of peace by paying the sum demanded,—and the French fleet sailed away.

Madame Calderon describes the home of Santa Anna at Manga la Clava, twenty-seven miles from Vera Cruz, approached through a wilderness of trees and flowers, the growth of the tierra caliente, and passing over leagues of natural garden, the property of Santa Anna.

The house was pretty and in nice order. General Santa Anna was a gentlemanly, good-looking, quietly dressed, rather melancholy-looking person, with a wooden leg. Knowing nothing of his past history, he might have been thought a philosopher, living in dignified retirement, one who had tried the world and found it all vanity, one who had suffered ingratitude, and who, if he were ever persuaded to emerge from his retreat, would only do so, like Cincinnatus, for the benefit of his country.

It was only now and then in conversation that the expression of his eye was startling, especially when he spoke of his leg, which was cut off below the knee. He gave an account of the wound, and in alluding to the French his countenance assumed an alarming appearance of bitterness.

In 1837 Bustamente was recalled. On the succession of Pedraza to the presidency, he had been banished, and went away to pursue his medical studies in France; for he, like Farias, had received a diploma as doctor of medicine, and had been the family phy-