On the morning of New Year’s day, we left for Capacuaro and Cheran.  As we rode out from the city, we were more than ever impressed with its verdant beauty and picturesqueness.  The road to Capacuaro was unexpectedly level and good, and we reached the town, which is purely indian, by nine o’clock.  Women, almost without exception, wore the native dress.  Goitres were common, and some, among the men, were really enormous.  Riding through the long town, we drew up before the house of the jefe de policia (chief of police), and summoned the village officials.  On their appearance we found that all but the jefe himself, were drunk, the secretario in particular being almost useless.  When we handed him the letter from the prefecto he was quite unable to make aught of its grandiloquence.  Having looked it through in a dazed way, he declared that we were “gringos,” “like the one who was here last year” (presumably Lumholtz).  With some severity, I told him he did wrong to call visitors to the town by the opprobrious name of gringos, and ordered him to read the letter and make known its contents to the jefe.  He made another effort and then helplessly said—­“Who can make anything of such a letter?  It is in their idioma.”  Sternly pointing to the signature I said—­“The letter is from your prefecto and written in his idioma; you see the firma.”  Helplessly shaking his head, he said, “Oh, yes, the firma is that of Silvano Martinez, but the letter is in your idioma.”  Seeing that he was of no earthly use, I took the letter from him, and, turning to the crowd which had gathered, rebuked them for their drunkenness, asserting that it was disgraceful for a whole town government to be intoxicated at the same time; that some one ought always to be sober enough to attend to business; that we had been insulted by being called gringos, and that our order had not been read to them because the secretario was too drunk to do his business; that there were two ways of dealing with such town governments, and that, unless something was done promptly, we would see how they would like to go back with us to Uruapan, whence we had come.  The jefe, who was really not drunk, thereupon begged to know what we desired, and the drunken secretario was somewhat frightened; the remainder of the official body expressed a wish to do only what we wanted.  I then read the prefecto’s letter in my best manner and added that we had come to Capacuaro only at the desire of the governor himself, to visit their mogote, and that we ought to wait no longer for guidance.  At once all was commotion and bustle.  Bidding the disgraced secretario go to his house and stay there, the jefe de policia summoned the rest of his company about him, seized his staff of office, buckled on his great machete, and took the lead; three policemen, with their machetes,