pes in
London streets, with our wheels on one side on a stone wall, and in a
pit on the other, and Black Sam leaning back with his feet on the
board, waiting with perfect tranquillity until the animals had got rid
of their superfluous energy and he could hold them in. We were always
just going to have some frightful accident, and always just missed it.
The last stage before we reached Otumba, a small dusky urchin ran
across the road just before us. How Black Sam contrived to pull up I
cannot tell, though, indeed, his arms were about the size of an
ordinary man's thighs; but he did, and they got the child out from the
horses' feet quite unhurt.

It was at the inn where we stopped to breakfast that we made our first
acquaintance with the great Mexican institutions--tortillas and pulque.
The pulque was being brewed on a large scale in an adjoining building.
The vats were made of cow-skins (with the hair inside), supported by a
frame of sticks; and in them was pulque in every stage, beginning with
the sweet aguamiel--honeywater--the fresh juice of the aloe, and then
the same in different degrees of fermentation till we come to the
_madre pulque_, the mother pulque, a little of which is used like
yeast, to start the fermentation, and which has a combined odour of
gas-works and drains. Pulque, as you drink it, looks like milk and
water, and has a mild smell and taste of rotten eggs. Tortillas are
like oat-cakes, but made of Indian corn meal, not crisp, but soft and
leathery. We thought both dreadfully nasty for a day or two; then we
could just endure them; then we came to like them; and before we left
the country we wondered how we should do without them.

CHAPTER III.

CITY OF MEXICO.

[Illustration: VIEW OF PART OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.]

Some thirty years ago, Don Agustin Yturbide, the first and last Emperor
of Mexico, found that he wanted a palace wherein to house his
newly-fledged dignity; and began to build one accordingly, in the high
street of Mexico, close to the great convent of San Francisco. It could
not have been nearly finished when its founder was shot: and it became
the _Hotel d'Yturbide_. We are now settled in it, in very comfortable
quarters. There is a restaurant down below, where the son of the late
Yturbide dines daily, and everybody points him out to us, and moralises
over him.

Mr. Christy's drawer-roll of letters of introduction has produced an
immediate crop of pleasant acquainta