We thus find the horned cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it.  Horses and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates.  The horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which Humboldt’s observation gives us the best idea, when he says that, although there are no made roads, wheel-carriages can travel distances of a thousand miles over gently-undulating prairies, without meeting any obstruction on the way.

Numbers of sheep are reared in the mountains, principally for the sake of the tallow, for the consumption of tallow-candles in the mines is enormous.  The owners scarcely care at all for the rest of the animal; and popular scandal accuses the sheep-farmers of driving their flocks straight into the melting-coppers, without going through the preliminary ceremony of killing them.  People told us that the tallow made in the cold regions loses its consistency when brought down into hotter climates, but we had no means of ascertaining the truth of this.

Artificial lighting by means of tallow was not known to the ancient Mexicans, who could not indeed have procured tallow except from the fat of deer and smaller animals.

Bernal Diaz tells how the Spanish invaders used to dress their wounds with “Indian Ointment.”  He explains the nature of this preparation in another place.  The Spaniards could get no oil in the country, nor anything else to make salve with, so they took some fat Indian who had just been killed in battle, and simply boiled him down.

Our ride next morning was but a few hours, the journey being so divided in order that the passengers may reach Vera Cruz before the heat of the day begins.  We passed over a dreary district, generally too dry for anything but cactus and acacias, but now and then, when a little water was to be found, displaying clumps of bamboos with their elegant feathery tufts.  Then the railway took us through the dismal downs, with their swamps and sand-hills, and so into Vera Cruz.

The English merchants we had already made acquaintance with were as kind and hospitable as ever, and I found an Englishman, whom we had known before, going as far as Havana by the same packet.  The yellow fever was unusually late this year, and, though June had begun, there were but few cases.  We heard afterwards that it set in a week or two after our departure, and by its extraordinary severity made ample amends for the lateness of its arrival.

After sunset, the air was alive with mosquitos, and the floors of the hotel swarmed with cockroaches.  The armadillo took quite naturally to the latter creatures, and crunched them up as fast as we could catch them for him.  I was surprised to find that our word “cockroaches” does not come from the German stock, like most of our names for insects and small creatures, but from the Latin side of the house.  The Spanish waiter called them cucarachas, and the French ones coqueraches.  The history of the armadillo ends unfortunately:  for some days he seemed to take quite kindly to the diet of bits of meat which we had to put him on, on shipboard, but he fell sick at Havana, and died.