brand-new experience.  There were three coaches on our train, first-, second-, and third-class.  When buying tickets we struck acquaintance with a Syrian peddler.  Three of these were travelling together; one of them spoke a little English, being proficient in profanity.  He likes the United States, per se, and does not like Mexico; but he says the latter is the better for trade.  “In the United States, you sell maybe fifteen, twenty-five, fifty cents a day; here ten, fifteen, twenty-five dollars.”  The trip lasted three hours and involved three changes of mules at stations, where we found all the excitement and bustle of a true railroad station.

The country was, at first, rolling, with a sparse growth of yuccas, many of which were exceptionally large and fine.  On the hills were occasional haciendas.  This broken district was succeeded by a genuine desert, covered with fine dust, which rose, as we rode, in suffocating clouds.  Here the valley began to close in upon us and its slopes were sprinkled with great cushion cactuses in strange and grotesque forms.  After this desert gorge, we came out into a more open and more fertile district extending to Tehuacan.  Even this, however, was dry and sunburned.

Our party numbered four.  We had written and telegraphed to the padre and expected that he, or Ernst, would meet us in Tehuacan.  Neither was there.  No one seemed to know just how far it was to Chila.  Replies to our inquiries ranged from five to ten leagues.[B] Looking for some mode of conveyance, we refused a coach, offered at fifteen pesos, as the price seemed high.  Hunting horses, we found four, which with a foot mozo to bring them back, would cost twenty pesos.  Telling the owner that we were not buying horses, but merely renting, we returned to the proprietor of the coach and stated that we would take it, though his price was high, and that he should send it without delay to the railroad station, where our companions were waiting.  Upon this the owner of the coach pretended that he had not understood that there were four of us (though we had plainly so informed him); his price was for two.  If we were four, he must have forty pesos.  A fair price here might be eight pesos for the coach, or four for horses.  So we told the coach owner that we would walk to Chila, rather than submit to such extortion.  This amused him greatly and he made some facetious observations, which determined me to actually perform the trip on foot.  Returning to the railroad station, where two of the party were waiting, I announced my intention of walking to Chila; as the way was long and the sand heavy and the padre’s silence and non-appearance boded no great hospitality in welcome, I directed the rest to remain comfortably at Tehuacan until my return on the next day.  Herman, however, refused the proposition; my scheme was dangerous; for me to go alone, at night, over a strange road, to Chila was foolhardy; he should accompany me to protect