east. It would have been wiser, however, to have named him
archbishop, and made Allende general-in-chief. Hidalgo was a capital
priest, but a thorough bad general, and could not even maintain discipline
in his army. In his first anger at the Creoles for keeping aloof from the
revolution, he had included them in the cry of '_Mueran los Gachupinos!_'
and now his eighty thousand Indians had taken their cue from him, and
murdered, and ravaged, and burned, wherever they came, like incarnate
devils. In this manner, the Creoles had been rendered our inveterate
enemies--more the pity. My late mother used always, when she went on a
pilgrimage to Guadalupe, to burn two tapers, a white and a black one--the
first for the blessed Virgin, the second for the devil. 'There is no
knowing,' she used to say, 'what one may come to.'"

The interesting nature of Jago's narrative, and his originality of manner,
had by this time riveted the attention of Don Manuel and his attendants.

"When we left Guanaxato," continued the ex-muleteer, "we were more than
eighty thousand men, but only three thousand four hundred of us were
armed. The _gente irracionale_, in their mad rage, had destroyed even the
muskets of the Gachupins. Our numbers, however, still kept increasing, and
Hidalgo continued his march in triumph. On the 27th October we were in
Tolucca. On the 28th we met Truxillo at Las Cruces, and scattered him and
his fifteen hundred men to the winds of heaven. Two days later we were in
sight of Mexico."

The captain paused. His delivery during the latter part of the narrative
had been hurried and broken; he was evidently much excited by the
recapitulation of the stirring scenes in which he had mingled. With
visible effort he resumed--

"Ah, Mexico, _estrella del mundo_! Well might thy beauty and brilliancy
dazzle the judgment of the poor cura. Hidalgo seemed to lose his head.
Instead of marching at once upon the city, he sent General Ximenes with a
summons to it to surrender. Ximenes, the greatest poltroon that ever
disgraced an epaulet, came back with the most exaggerated stories of the
formidable preparations that were making to receive us. This disconcerted
Hidalgo; and on the top of that out came a whole regiment of priests and
shavelings, sent by the Viceroy, and they talked to Hidalgo about
hell-fire and such like, till he swore it would be the most frightful
sacrilege to deliver up Mexico, the seat of our holy religion and of all
piety