succeeded in securing the unfortunate
man, but not until he had offered a desperate resistance. The locomotive
was then put in motion, the nearest station was reached without further
misadventure, and the driver was placed in custody. The train ultimately
arrived in Paris after two hours' delay.

A MEXICAN CHIEF'S RAILWAY IMPRESSIONS.

Steam and gunpowder have often proved the most eloquent apostles of
civilization, but the impressiveness of their arguments was, perhaps,
never more strikingly illustrated than at the little railway station of
Gallegos, in Northern Mexico. When the first passenger train crossed the
viaduct, and the Wizards of the North had covered the festive tables with
the dainties of all zones, the governor of Durango was not the most
distinguished visitor; for among the spectators on the platform the
natives were surprised to recognise the Cabo Ventura, the senior chief of
a hill-tribe, which had never formally recognised the sovereignty of the
Mexican Republic. The Cabo, indeed, considered himself the lawful ruler
of the entire _Comarca_, and preserved a document in which the Virey
Gonzales, _en nombre del Rey_--in the name of the King--appointed him
"Protector of all the loyal tribes of Castro and Sierra Mocha." His
diploma had an archaeological value, and several amateurs had made him a
liberal offer, but the old chieftain would as soon have sold his scalp.
His soul lived in the past. All the evils of the age he ascribed to the
demerits of the traitors who had raised the banner of revolt against the
lawful king; and as for the countrymen of Mr. Gould, the intrusive
_Yangueses_, his vocabulary hardly approached the measure of his contempt
when he called them _herexes y combusteros_--heretics and humbugs.

"But it cannot be denied," Yakoob Khan wrote to his father, "that it has
pleased Allah to endow those sinners with a good deal of brains;" and the
voice of nature gradually forced the Cabo to a similar conclusion, till
he resolved to come and see for himself.

When the screech of the iron Behemoth at last resounded at the lower end
of the valley, and the train swept visibly around the curve of the
river-gap, the natives set up a yell that waked up the mountain echoes;
men and boys waved their hats and jumped to and fro, in a state of the
wildest excitement. Only the old Cabo stood stock-still. His gaze was
riveted upon the phenomenon that came thundering up the valley; his keen
e