f an _alacran_, a venomous scorpion, I remained to bathe and put
on my other shirt.

During the entire trip to and from Mexico, I found that by eating
sparingly of light food, smoking less, and laving constantly, I could
endure almost any amount of fatigue, with but an hour or two of sleep in
the twenty-four; a few paper cigarillos was all the extraneous stimulant
I indulged in while on the road.

Acaponeta is a hot little town, half built of mud, with a spacious
rural-like square, shaded by fine trees, and boasting of a quaint old
church. It is but a few leagues from the ocean, surrounded by a sandy
soil, which however, under the sun's fierce rays, over all the Tierra
Caliente, produces quantities of tropical plants: the cassava for meal,
bananas and guavas, with melons and many kinds of fruit. The inhabitants
of these secluded districts, living in little worlds of their own, free
from care or war, regardless of the political revolutions so continually
agitating the mother country, seem to enjoy the _dolce far niente_ in
its truest sense. They are too poor to excite the rapacity of the
government; their land yields almost spontaneously all means of
subsistence; they live in mud cabins or bamboo huts, through whose light
lattice-work of reeds or trellis, the sea breeze cools them during the
languid siesta; then at the fiesta or fandango, the women, in white
muslin camizettas and gaily striped basquinas, with gilt baubles,
perhaps, thrust through their black locks, attended by the men, whose
only wealth consists of horse, saddle, spurs and serapa--dance, game and
drink until the fiesta is ended, with no fears of interruption save what
lies in the sharp steel of their mercurial cuchillos--ignorant and
unenvious of all around them.

I found my guide in the Plaza, and walked into a white building on a
corner, purporting to be a _Fonda y Billar_. It was Sunday morning,
besides some notable feast day; a little old spider-legged uneven
billiard table was thronged by rakish blades, with little miniature
nine pins stuck in the centre of the cloth, which were being rapidly
knocked down by the players; a pulperia was close at hand, and the chink
of _copitas_, filled with aguadiente or muscal, was keeping a musical
accompaniment to the click of the billiard balls. The patron was an
active, portly person, and from his clean, natty attire and huge beard,
with a certain sea roll to his gait, I correctly surmised that he had
"sailed