sitting
quietly and easily upon a furious bronze horse. The horse is in a
terrible state of excitement, but the woman is not alarmed in the
least; for she seems to be well aware that it is only make-believe
passion, badly executed in bronze. Who could this woman be but
Malinche, or Marianna, the Indian mistress of Cortez--a fit patroness
of the women of Puebla. She was the first convert that Cortez ever made
to Christianity; and her sort of Christianity is not unusual in Mexico.
That beautiful cone that rises so majestically out of the plain between
Puebla and Tlascala bears the name of Malinche; but as this name was
applied to her paramour as well as to herself, an additional
testimonial, in the form of a bronze statue, was deemed requisite; for
she is considered here as almost a saint, and would be altogether such
if she had not been the mother of children, and ended her career by
getting married. That act of getting married--not her former
life--rendered her unfit for a saint; for how could an honest housewife
be a saint? She might have been the best of mothers and the best of
wives, and have performed scrupulously the duties that God had assigned
to her upon earth; but she was lacking in romance, in those aerial
materials from which saints are made. Saints are made in damp, cold
prison-cells, where, in the midst of self-inflicted misery, they see
visions, dream dreams, and perform cures upon crowds as deluded as
themselves.

It was a delightful afternoon when I mounted my horse for a ride to
Cholula. The wind of the day before had driven away every vapor from
this exceedingly transparent atmosphere, excepting only the cloud that
was resting upon Popocatapetl, a little below its snow-covered summit.
It was such weather as we have at "harvest home," and it was truly a
"harvest home" throughout the whole Vega. Men were working in gangs in
the different fields, gathering stalks, or husking corn, or cutting
grain, or plowing with a dozen plows in company, or harrowing, or
putting in seed. It was harvest-time and seed-time together. The full
green blade and the ripened grain stood in adjoining fields in this
region of perpetual sunshine. As I rode along between carefully
cultivated estates, I did not fail to catch the enthusiasm which groups
of cheerful field-laborers always inspire in one whose happiest
recollections run back to the labors of the farm. Such are the
varieties this country affords: three days ago I was e