"Pero, no hay, Senor.” (But there is none, Sir.)

“Well, maize will answer.”

"Tampoco.”

“What! no maize?  What do you make your tortillas of?”

“We have no tortillas.”

“How, then, do you live?”

“We don’t live.”

A general shout of laughter greeted this last reply, in which, after a moment of puzzled hesitation, the alcalde himself joined.

“So, you don’t live?”

“Absolutely, no!”

“But you eat?”

“Very little.  We are very poor.”

“Well, what do you eat?”

“Cheese, frijoles, and an egg now and then.”

“But, no tortillas?”

“No.  We planted the last kernel of maize two days ago.”

And so it was.  The little stock of dried grass and maize-stalks stored up from the present rainy season had long ago been consumed, and the maize itself, which is here the real staff of life, had run short,—­and that, too, in a country where three crops a year might easily be produced by a very moderate expenditure of labor in the way of tillage and irrigation.

Fortunately for our poor animals, Dolores had provided against contingencies like this, and taken in a supply of maize at La Union.  As for ourselves, what with a few eggs and frijoles, furnished by the alcalde, in addition to the stock of edibles, pickled oysters and other luxuries, prepared for us by Dona Maria, we contrived to fare right sumptuously in Goascoran.  We afterwards found out, experimentally, what it was not to live, in the sense intended to be conveyed by the unfortunate alguazil and the impetuous alcalde, and which H. declared logically meant to be without tortillas—­But we could never make out why the alcalde should call the alguazil “a beast,” and beat him over his shoulders with a cane, withal.

Goascoran is a small town, of about four hundred inhabitants, and boasts a tolerably genteel church and a comfortable cabildo.  It is situated on the left bank of the river to which it gives its name, and which here still maintains its character of a broad and beautiful stream.  On the opposite side from the town rises a high, picturesque bluff, at the foot of which the river gathers its waters in deep, dark pools with mirror-like surfaces, disturbed only by the splash of fishes springing at their prey, or by the sudden dash of water-fowls settling from their arrowy flight in a little cloud of spray.

I have alluded to the castellated Rock of Goascoran, which, however, is only a type of the general features of the surrounding country.  The prevailing rock is sandstone, and it is broken up in fantastic peaks, or great cubical blocks with flat tops and vertical walls, resembling the mesas of New Mexico.  At night, their dark masses, rising on every hand, might be mistaken for frowning fortresses or massive strongholds