the generality of houses, all of one story,
built of adobes (mud-bricks dried in the sun), with flat roofs of sand
and lime resting on wooden rafters, and the naked ground for a floor,
all dark, dirty, and comfortless. There are even many huts built
entirely of the universal aloe. The stems of wild aloes which have been
allowed to flower are stuck into the ground, side by side, and pieces
of leaves tied on outside them with aloe-fibre. These cut leaves are
set like tiles to form a roof, and pegged down with the thorns which
grow at their extremities. Picturesque and cheap, though hardly
comfortable, for we are in the "tierra fria" now, and the mornings and
evenings in winter are often bitterly cold.

But the churches! Is it possible that they can belong to these wretched
filthy little cottages. As black Sam, our driver, a runaway Texan
slave, suggested, it looked as though the villagers might pull down
their houses and locate themselves and their families in their
churches. We thought of Mr. Ruskin, who has somewhere expressed an
earnest desire that all the money and energy that England has wasted in
making railroads, had been spent in building churches; and we wished he
had been here to see his principles carried out.

I have travelled on rough roads in my time, but on such a road as this
never. My companion refused for a time to award the premium of badness
to our thoroughfare; but, just while we were discussing the question
and recounting our experience of bone-smashing highways, we reached a
pass where the road consisted of a series of steps, nearly a foot in
depth, down which steps we went at a swinging trot, holding on for our
lives, in terror lest the next jerk should fairly wrench our arms out
of their sockets, while we could plainly hear the inside passengers
howling for mercy, as they were shot up against the roof which knocked
them back into their seats. Aching all over, we reached level ground
again, and Mr. Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road
anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision
which later experiences only served to confirm.

Our start, every time we changed horses, was a sight to see. Nine
half-broken horses and mules, in a furious state of excitement, were
harnessed to our unwieldy machine; the helpers let go, and off they
went, kicking, plunging, rearing, biting, and screaming, into ruts and
watercourses that were like the trenches they make for gas-pi