s and Mexicans were at the other table in the sala
when we marched in, and as soon as we had taken off the edge of our
fierce hunger, we began to compare notes with them. "Had a pleasant
journey from Mexico?" They all answered at once, delighted to find an
audience to whom to tell their sorrows, as men always are under such
circumstances. It appeared that they had reached Huamantla an hour or
two before us, and to their surprise and delight no robbers had
appeared. But between the outskirts of the town and the inn, the cords
behind the diligence were cut, and every particle of luggage had
disappeared. At the inn-gate they got out and discovered their loss.
They set upon the Administrador of the diligence-company, who
sympathized deeply with them, but had no more substantial comfort to
offer. They declared the driver must have been an accomplice, and the
driver was sent for, for them to wreak their fury upon. He appeared
with his mouth full of beans, and told them, as soon as he could speak,
that they ought to be very thankful they had come off so easily, and,
looking at them with an expression of infinite disgust, returned to his
supper; they followed his example, and seemed to have at last found
consolation in hot dishes and Catalan wine. It was wonderful to hear of
the fine things that were in the lost portmanteaus,--the rings, the
gold watches, the rouleaux of dollars, the "papers of the utmost
importance."

I am afraid the Spanish American has not always a very strict regard
for truth.

These gentlemen had indeed got off easily, as the driver said; for the
last diligence from Vera Cruz, with our steamboat acquaintances in it,
had been stopped just outside this very town of Huamantla as they left
it before daylight in the morning. The robbers were but three, but they
had plundered the unfortunate travellers as effectually as thirty could
have done. Now, all this was very pretty to hear as a tale, but not
satisfactory to travellers who were going by the same road the next
morning; and in the disagreeable barrack-room where our beds stood in
long lines, we, the nine passengers of the "up" diligence, held a
council, standing, like Mr. Macaulay's senators, and there decided on a
most Christian line of conduct--that when the three bore down upon us,
and the muzzle of the inevitable escopeta was poked in at our window,
we would descend meekly, and at the command of "boca abajo," ("mouth
downwards,") we would humiliate ou