improvement, but, as I have said before, the eating and drinking in Mexico is very poor.

"What a pity you left us, just now," said the captain to me, as I came back to them in the street, after five minutes' absence in a shop.

"Why?" asked I.

"An amusing incident just now occurred," he said. "An unruly fellow was arrested by that policeofficer standing there, and flung himself down, and refused to move. The officer immediately pulled out his pistol, and held it to the fellow's ear, who got up instantly and was 'run in' by another."

True it is that this incident was amusing in its result; but the pointing of the pistol is not, in itself, a very recommendable police proceeding, nor was it, at the time, associated in my mind with what I afterwards saw several times complained of in the papers. They are my authority. Their complaint was that in the more or less remote districts a prisoner was actually allowed to run away, and thus incur the legal penalty, without further trouble, of being shot for attempting to escape. While I was in Mexico, an anecdote was current that a prisoner, on being handcuffed, had said, "Tie my legs too, for I don't want to be tempted into running away." How plainly such facts indicate a scattered population, without means of intercourse, and thus almost exempt from responsibility to the higher powers! And this is the mildest view to take of such things. I would

here farther observe that, in Mexico, shooting is the usual mode of inflicting capital punishment on all criminals condemned to death. The Mexicans have a horror of our halter; nor do they less revolt from the bloodshed of the guillotine.

On the following day we visited the church at Guadalupe, which owes its origin to a mysterious appearance of the Virgin Mary, and to which wondrous legends as good as any others are attached. The Virgin is said to have miraculously appeared on the 12th of December, 1531, and, accordingly, on the anniversary of that day numerous tribes of Indians, all dressed out according to their several tribal costumes, crowd into Mexico and perform their pilgrimages to Guadalupe. I have been told by an eye-witness that he has seen the whole length of the San Francisco and the Plateros completely filled. This length is more than half a mile. I regret much not having witnessed this scene. I should have been able to compare it with a wondrous pilgrimage I saw at Treves, in 1844, when thousands and thousands of pilgrims poured daily into that ancient city, from nearly every European country, to worship the "Holy Coat," or the vesture of the Crucifixion. The power of Pilgrimage to celebrate Miracle, all over the world, is, of itself, miraculous! A great deal of time is also wasted in small pilgrimages to the spot, on the 12th of every month. A sailor has added a peculiarity to the building by erecting a stone ex voto

ship, sail and all, in commemoration of his escape from shipwreck. Below the Virgin's figure there also hangs a hat, reputed to have belonged to a workman, who, while engaged in the building of the church, fell from the scaffold, and was miraculously caught in the air, and thus saved. The poor man who fell from Somerset House, on a similar occasion, was not so favoured. Only his watch was suspended on a chance hook, as he fell. The watch was removed for a mock dial, only lately displaced. How many hats may have succeeded one another at Guadalupe is impossible of solution. The church stands on a hill, whence an extensive view is obtained.

We made this journey by tramway. These tramways all offer a remarkably well-conducted mode of conveyance, in which mules are used; and (as I shall presently say again) they must, with railways, be the roads of the country. In the evening, having again somewhat meanly dined in a dark sala, the captain and the doctor left to join the steamer at Vera Cruz, and my American friend leaving early the next morning, I was again alone.

But on my return from Guadalupe I found Mr. Jackson's card, and on the next morning I had a long and interesting conversation with him, in which he proposed I should accompany his brother as far as Puebla, whither that inspector of the line on that "length" was going in a few days on business. Nothing could better chime in with my wishes, and

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