It was quite impossible, with the amount of work we had to do, and the difficulties under which we labored, to give the least attention to the ruins.  We arranged, however, to make a photograph of the town authorities standing in the great court of one of the fine old buildings—­a court the walls of which are covered with beautiful mosaic decorations, betraying taste and skill.  The motley crew of half-drunk officials, miserably dressed, degraded, poor, in this scene of past magnificence, called up thoughts of the contrast between the government of old Mitla and the present,—­of past magnificence and modern squalor.

[Illustration:  THE CONTRAST; PAST AND PRESENT—­MITLA]

Having accomplished all we wished at Mitla, we again struck eastward toward the land of the Mixes.  Late in starting, we made no attempt to go further than San Lorenzo that afternoon.  The old road was familiar, and from there on, through the following day, everything came back to memory.  Even individual trees, projecting rock masses, and little streams, were precisely as we remembered them from our journey of three years earlier.  We reached Ayutla in the evening a little before sunset.  Riding directly to the municipal house we summoned the town government.  We had not provided ourselves with orders from the jefe of the district, as Villa Alta, the jefatura, lay far out of our course.  We planned to use our general letter from the governor.  When the officials assembled we presented our order and explained it; we told them what we needed for the night, and arrangements were at once made for supplying us; we then told the presidente of the work we had before us, and informed him that, because his town was small, we should ask for only thirty-five men for measurement, and that these must be ready, early in the morning, with no trouble to us.

The presidente demurred; he doubted whether the people would come to be measured; we told him that they would not come, of course, unless he sent for them.  When morning came, although everything had been done for our comfort, there was no sign of subjects.  That no time might be lost, we took the presidente and three or four other officials, who were waiting around the house; then, with firmness, we ordered that he should bring other subjects.  The officials were gone for upwards of an hour, and when they returned, had some ten or twelve men with them.  “Ah,” said I, “you have brought these, then, for measurement?” “On the contrary, sir,” said the presidente, “this is a committee of the principal men of the town who have come to tell you that the people do not wish to be measured.”  “Ah,” said I, “so you are a committee, are you, come to tell me that you do not wish to be measured?” “Yes.”  Waiting a moment, I turned to the officials and asked, “And which one particularly does not wish to be measured of this committee?” Immediately, a most conservative-looking individual