enters, not he making exit, who is called upon to contribute to the
_alcabala_. It is levied on every article or commodity brought from the
country in search of a city market. Nothing escapes it; the produce of
farm and garden, field and forest--all have to pay toll at the
_garitas_, so losing a considerable percentage of their value. The
brown aboriginal, his "burro" laden with charcoal, or skins of _pulque_,
or himself staggering under a load of planks heavy enough to weigh down
a donkey, which he has transported from a mountain forest--ten or twenty
miles it may be--is mulcted in this blackmail before he can pass through
a _garita_.

Not unfrequently he is unable to meet the demand till he have made sale
of the taxed commodity. On such occasions he hypothecates his hat, or
_frezada_, leaving it at the gate, and going on bareheaded or
bare-shouldered to the market, to redeem the pawned article on return.

Save through these gates there is no access to, or egress from, the
Mexican capital; and at each, besides the official having charge of the
revenue matters, a soldier-guard is stationed, with a guard-house
provided; their duties being of a mixed, three-cornered kind--customs,
police, and military. Five or six such posts there are, on the five or
six roads leading out from the city, like the radiating limbs of a
star-fish; and one of these is the _garita_ El Nino Perdido--literally,
the gate of the "Lost Child." It is, however, one through which the
traffic is of secondary importance; since it is not on any of the main
routes of travel. That which it bars is but a country road,
communicating with the villages of Mixcoac, Coyoacan, and San Angel.
Still, these being places of rural residence, where some of the
_familiares principes_ have country houses, a carriage passing through
the gate of the Lost Child is no rarity. Besides, from the gate itself
runs a _Calzada_, or causeway, wide and straight for nearly two miles,
with a double row of grand old trees along each side, whose pleasant
shade invites, and often receives, visits from city excursionists out
for a stroll, ride, or drive. Near the end of the second mile it angles
abruptly to the right, in the direction of San Angel--a sharp corner the
writer has good reason to remember, having been shot at by
_salteadores_, luckily missed, while passing round it on his way from
country quarters to the city. A horse of best blood saved _his_ blood
there, or this