TRAVELS IN MEXICO.
outfit in the city he leaves, unless he chance to fall in with a conducta on the route, which is of rare occurrence. That picturesque port of Acapulco has of late years fallen into disuse, since new ways have been opened across the continent, but in olden times it was a busy and a celebrated maritime city: To it went, and from it sailed, all those grand old galleons, which performed their portion of the voyage between the Indies and Spain, six months, sometimes, on the voyage between Manilla and the Mexican coast. Arrived there, the rich freightage was transported overland by a thousand mules and donkeys, and such portion as was not sold in Mexico reshipped at Vera Cruz for Spain. Sometimes the cargo reached the value of two million dollars; and as but one ship arrived in the year, it was looked for by merchants and mariners along the entire coast of Mexico. It brought calicoes and muslins, silks, jewels, and spices, and carried back silver, cochineal, cacao, and monks and priests as passengers. Bret Harte gives the best picture of those golden days in his "Lost Galleon":—
"In sixteen hundred and forty-one.
The regular yearly galleon,
Laden with odorous gums and spice,
India cotton and India rice,
And the richest silks of far Cathay,
Was due at Acapulco Bay.
••••
The trains were waiting outside the walls,
The wives of sailors thronged the town,
The traders sat by their empty stalls,
And the Viceroy himself came down;
The bells in the tower were all atrip,
Te Deums were on each father's lip,
The limes were ripening in the sun
For the sick of the coming galleon."
More ancient than the institution of trade between Mexico and the Indies was the object of our search that morning in early June. "Six leagues from Cuernavaca," says a writer of forty years ago, "lies a cerro, three hundred feet in height, which, with the ruins that cover it, is known as Xochicalco, or the 'Hill of Flowers.' The base of this eminence is surrounded
