by the government or the rebels (one seems about as bad as the other in this respect), that they must have a high price to pay them for the risk.  Generally seven reals, or 3s. 6d. per arroba of 25 lbs. is the price.  This salt is evaporated in the salinas of Campeche, taken by water to Tuzpan, and then brought up the country on mules’ backs—­each beast carrying 300 lbs.  Of course, this salt is very coarse and very watery; all salt made in this way is.  It suits the New Orleans people better to import salt from England, than to make it in this way in the Gulf of Mexico, though the water there is very salt, and the sun very hot.  The fact, that it pays to carry salt on mules’ backs, tells volumes about the state of the country.  At the lowest computation, the mules would do four or five times as much work if they were set to draw any kind of cart—­however rough—­on a carriageable road.  It is true that there is some sort of road from here to Tampico, but an English waggoner would not acknowledge it by that name at all; and the muleteers are still in possession of most of the traffic in this district, as indeed they are over almost all the country.

It was mid-day by this time; and, as we could not get to the Rio Grande without taking our chance for the night in some Indian rancho, we turned back.  The heat had become so oppressive that we took off our coats; and Mr. Christy, riding in his shirt-sleeves and holding a white umbrella over his head, which he had further protected with a turban, declared that even in the East he had not had so fatiguing a ride.  We passed through Soquital, and there the natives were idling and drinking spirits as before, and seemed hardly to have moved since we left.  This plateau of Atotonilco el Grande, called for shortness Grande, is, like most of the high plains of Mexico, composed mostly of porphyry and obsidian, a valley filled up with debris from the surrounding mountains, which are all volcanic, embedded in reddish earth.  The mountain-torrents—­in which the water, so to speak, comes down all at once, not flowing in a steady stream all the year round as in England—­have left evidences of their immense power in the ravines with which the sides of the hills, from their very tops downward, are fluted.

These fluted mountain-ridges resemble the “Kamms” (combs) of the Swiss Alps, called so from their toothed appearance.

We had met numbers of Indians, bringing their wares to the Sunday market in the great square of Atotonilco el Grande; and when we reached the town on our way home, business was still going on briskly; so we put up our horses, and spent an hour or two in studying the people and the commodities they dealt in.  It was a real old-fashioned Indian market, very much such as the Spaniards found when they first penetrated into the country.  A large proportion of the people could speak no Spanish, or only a few words.  The unglazed pottery, palm-leaf mats, ropes and bags of aloe-fibre, dressed skins, &c., were just the same