I have put down our notions on the “Indian Question,” just as they presented themselves to us at the time.  The dismal forebodings of the planters seem to have been fulfilled to some extent at least, for we heard, not long after our return to Europe, that the Indians had plundered and set fire to numbers of the haciendas of the south country, and that our friends the administradors of Cocoyotla had escaped with their lives.  The hacienda itself, if our information is correct, which I can hardly doubt, is now a blackened deserted ruin.

At supper appeared two more guests besides ourselves, apparently traders carrying goods to sell at the villages and haciendas on the road.  In such places the hacienda offers its hospitality to all travellers, and there was room in our caravanserai for yet more visitors if they had come.  Our beds were like those in general use in the tropics, where mattresses would be unendurable, and even the pillows become a nuisance.  The frame of the bed has a piece of coarse cloth stretched tightly over it; a sheet is laid upon this, and another sheet covers the sleeper.  This compromise between a bed and a hammock answers the purpose better than anything else, and admits of some circulation of air, especially when you have kicked off the sheet and lie fully exposed to the air and the mosquitos.

I cannot say that it is pleasant to wake an hour or two after going to bed, with your exact profile depicted in a wet patch on the pillow; nor is it agreeable to become conscious at the same time of an intolerable itching, and to find, on lighting a candle, that an army of small ants are walking over you, and biting furiously.  These were my experiences during my first night at Cocoyotla; and I finished the night, lying half-dressed on my bed, with the ends of my trousers-legs tied close with handkerchiefs to keep the creatures out.  But when we got into our saddles in the early morning, we forgot all these little miseries, and started merrily on our expedition to the great stalactitic cave of Cacahuamilpan.

Our day’s journey had two objects; one was to see the cave, and the other to visit the village close by,—­one of the genuine unmixed Indian communities, where even the Alcalde and the Cura, the temporal and spiritual heads of the society, are both of pure Indian blood, and white influence has never been much felt.

[Illustration:  INDIANS MAKING & BAKING TORTILLAS. (After Models made by a Native Artist.)]

A ride of two or three hours from the hacienda brought us into a mountainous district, and there we found the village of Cacahuamilpan on the slope of a hill.  In the midst of neat trim gardens stood the little white church, and the ranches of the inhabitants, cottages of one room, with walls of canes which one can see through in all directions, and roofs of thatch, with the ground smoothed and trodden hard for a floor.  Everything seemed clean and prosperous, and there was