purple, or scarlet.

You will see him, and feel him too—if you don’t fall upon your face at his stern summons “A tierra!” and afterwards deliver up to him every article of value you have been so imprudent as to transport upon your person.

Refuse the demand, and you will get the contents of carbine, escopeta, or blunderbuss in your body, or it may be a lance-blade intruded into your chest!

Yield graceful compliance, and he will as gracefully give you permission to continue your journey—with, perhaps, an apology for having interrupted it!

I know it is difficult to believe in such a state of things, in a country called civilised—difficult to you. To me they are but remembrances of many an actual experience.

Their existence is easily explained. You will have a clue to it, if you can imagine a land, where, for a period of over fifty years, peace has scarcely ever been known to continue for as many days; where all this time anarchy has been the chronic condition; a land full of disappointed spirits—unsatisfied aspirants to military fame, also unpaid; a land of vast lonely plains and stupendous hills, whose shaggy sides form impenetrable fastnesses—where the feeble pursued may bid defiance to the strong pursuer.

And such is the land of Anahuac. Even within sight of its grandest cities there are places of concealment—harbours of refuge—alike free to the political patriot, and the outlawed picaro.

Like other strangers to New Spain, before setting foot upon its shores, I was incredulous about this peculiarity of its social condition. It was too abnormal to be true. I had read and heard tales of its brigandage, and believed them to be tinged with exaggeration. A diligencia stopped every other day, often when accompanied by an escort of dragoons—twenty to fifty in number; the passengers maltreated, at times murdered—and these not always common people, but often officers of rank in the army, representatives of the Congresa, senators of the State, and even high dignitaries of the Church!

Afterwards I had reason to believe in the wholesale despoliation. I was witness to more than one living illustration of it.

But, in truth, it is not so very different from what is daily, hourly, occurring among ourselves. It is dishonesty under a different garb and guise—a little bolder than that of our burglar—a little more picturesque than that practised by the fustian-clad garotter of our streets.

And let it be remembered, in favour of Mexican morality—that, for one daring bandolero upon the road, we have a hundred sneaking thieves of the attorney type—stock-jobbers—promoters of swindling speculations—trade and skittle sharpers—to say nothing of our grand Government swindle of over-taxation—all of which are known only exceptionally in the land of Moctezuma.

In point of immorality—on one side stripping it of its picturesqueness, on the other of its abominable plebbishness—I very much doubt, whether the much-abused people of Mexico need fear comparison with the much-bepraised people of England.

For my part, I most decidedly prefer the robber of the road, to him of the robe; and I have had some experience of both.

This digression has been caused by my recalling an encounter with the former, that occurred to me in La Puebla—on that same night when I found myself forestalled.