n bed I did not expect to find, nor could I
have found them a year earlier. But the new and enterprising company of
Escandon and Co., who now have the possession of the Real del Monte
silver mines, of which I shall speak hereafter, had just completed the
"Grand House" (_Casa Grande_) in connection with the salt manufacture,
which they carry on here solely for the use of that single mine. It was
a neat, one-story residence of dried mud (_adobe_), and worthy the
occupancy of the proudest king of Tezcuco. Though the flagging of the
interior court was not all completed, yet the managing partner had
taken possession, and it was fitted up according to the most approved
style of an Anglo-Saxon residence. As horse and rider passed into the
outer court, there stood ready a groom to lead the former into the
inner court, where were the stables for the horses, and I entered the
house to enjoy the unlooked-for pleasures of English hospitality in
this out-of-the-way Indian village.

The resident partner was an Englishman. His connection with the Real
del Monte Company extended only to the manufacture of salt. But even
this was an extensive affair, and had already absorbed an investment of
$100,000, in order to provide the salt used in only one branch of the
process of refining silver at that mine. The gentleman was now absent,
but his excellent English wife and her brother knew full well how to
discharge the duties of host even to an unknown stranger. The dinner
was of the best, and there was no lack of appetite after a hard day's
ride on a trotting horse. So we all had the prime elements of
enjoyment. Entertainment for man and beast is among the highest
luxuries to be found by the wayside. It was an equal luxury to my hosts
in their isolated residence to receive a visit from one whose only
recommendation was that the English language was his native tongue, so
that when we retired from the dining-room we had become old
acquaintances.

REMAINS OF TEZCUCO.

The King of Tezcuco never knew what it was, on a raw winter's evening,
to sit before a bright wood fire, in a fire-place, with feet on fender
and tongs in hand, listening to an animated conversation so mixed up of
two languages that it was hard to tell which predominated. Not all the
stateliness to be found in Mexican palaces, where, in a lordly
tapestried halls, men and women sit and shiver over a protracted
dinner, can yield pleasures like those grouped around an English
fir