and even of the whole hands and feet.  The limbs thus mutilated looked as though the parts which were wanting had been amputated, and the wound had quite healed over, but it is caused by a gradual absorption without wound and without pain.  As every one knows, leprosy of these kinds was held until quite lately to be dangerously contagious; but, fortunately for the poor creatures themselves, this is quite clearly proved to be false, and the lepers are only shut up that they may have no children, for the affection appears to be hereditary.

It was early one morning, when we were going out to breakfast at Tisapan, that Don Juan recounted to us his experience of garrotted malefactors sitting dead in their chairs in the great square across which we were riding.  “It was really almost enough to spoil a fellow’s breakfast,” he added pathetically.  Though an Englishman, and only arrived in the country a few years before, Don Juan was as clever with the lazo as most Mexicans, and could colear a bull in great style.  Indeed, we had started early that morning in order to have time enough to look at the bulls in the potreros—­the great grass-meadows—­that lie for miles outside the city, and which are made immensely fertile by flooding from time to time.  Wherever we saw a bull in the distance, Don Juan and his grand little horse Pancho plunged over a bank and through a gap, and we after him.  No one ever leaps anything in this country, indeed the form of the saddle puts it out of the question.  One or two bulls looked up as we entered the enclosure, and bolted into other fields, pushing in among the thorns of the aloes which formed close hedges of fixed bayonets round the meadows.  At last Don Juan cut off the retreat of an old bull, and galloping after him like mad, flung the running loop of the lazo over his horns, at the same time winding the other end round the pummel of his saddle.  The bull was still standing on all four legs, pulling with all its might against Pancho.  Galloping after him, so as to slacken the end of the lazo, we contrived to transfer it from Don Juan’s saddle to mine.  Now my own horse happened to be a little lame, and I was riding a poor little black beast whose bones really seemed to rattle in his skin.  Our acquaintances in the Paseo had been quite facetious about him, recommending us to be careful and not to smoke up against him, for fear we should blow him over, and otherwise whetting their wit upon him.  He acquitted himself very creditably, however, and when the bull began to pull against him, he leant over on the other side, as if he had been galloping round a circus; and the bull could not move him an inch.  It was quite evident that it was not his first experiment.  In the mean time Don Juan had dropped the noose of my lazo just before the bull’s nose, and presently that animal incautiously put his foot into it, when Don Juan whipped it up round his leg and went off at full gallop.  My little black