to better things. As to this
being a new country, it came slowly back into Ned's mind that there had
been a great and populous empire here at a time when the island upon
which the city of New York was afterward built was a bushy wilderness,
occupied by half-naked savages, who were ready to sell it for a few
dollars' worth of kettles and beads.

"I guess I'm beginning to wake up," thought Ned. "When the _Goshhawk_ was
lying in the Bay of Vera Cruz, I was too busy to see anything. No, I
wasn't. I did stare at the Orizaba mountain peak, and they told me it is
over seventeen thousand feet high. First mountain I ever saw that could
keep on snow and ice in such weather as this. I don't want to live up
there in winter. Well! Now I've seen some of the biggest trees I ever
did see. I wonder if any of them were here when the Spaniards came in. I
guess they were, some of them."

He was really beginning to see something of Mexico, and it almost made
him forget the hardness of that unpleasant saddle. At the end of another
mile, he was saying to himself:

"That field yonder is tobacco, is it? The one we just passed was
sugar-cane, and Pablo said the plantation across the road was almost all
coffee. He says that further on he will show me orange groves, bananas,
and that sort of thing. But what on earth are grenaditas and mangoes?
They'll be something new to me, and I want to find out how they taste."

Nothing at all of a military or otherwise of an apparently dangerous
character had been encountered by the fugitive travellers when, at about
the middle of the forenoon, they came to a parting of the ways. A
seemingly well-travelled road went off to the left, or southward, while
the one they were on turned more to the right and climbed a hill, as if
it were making a further effort to get out of the _tierra caliente_. A
great many things had been explained to Ned, as they rode along, and he
was not surprised, therefore, when Senor Zuroaga said to him:

"My young friend, this is the place I told you of. We must part here.
You and your pony will go on with Colonel Tassara, and I will take my
chances for reaching my place of refuge in Oaxaca. It is not a very good
chance, but I must make the best of it that I can. Take good care of
yourself. I have already said good-by to the senora and the senorita. I
think they will soon be out of danger."

Ned was really grateful, and he tried to say so, but all he could think
of just then was: