rid liquor,
and the dogs could not be got to go near him. We stirred him up with a
bamboo and drove him into the garden, but he left his portrait painted
in slime upon our floor.

The Indian choir chanted the Oracion as we had heard it the night
before at Temisco, and then came the calling over of the raya. After
that we walked about the place, and sat talking in the open corridor.
Owners of estates, and indeed all white folks living in this part of
the country were beginning to feel very anxious about their position,
and not without reason. Ordinary political events excite but little
interest in these Indian districts, and so trifling a matter as a
revolution and a change of people in power does not affect them
perceptibly. The Indians are absolutely free, and have their votes and
their civil privileges like any other citizens. All that the owners of
the plantations ask of them is to work for high wages, and hitherto
they have done this, but for years it has been becoming more and more
difficult to get them to work. All they do with the money when they get
it, is to spend it in drinking and gambling, if they are of an
extravagant turn of mind; or to bury it in some out-of-the-way place,
if they are given to saving. If they were whites or half-caste Mexicans
they would spend their money upon fine clothes and horses, but the
Indian keeps to the white cotton dress of his fathers, and is never
seen on horseback. Now this being the case, it does not seem
unreasonable that they should not much care about working hard for
money that is of so little use to them when they have got it, and that
they should prefer living in their little huts walled with canes and
thatched with palm-leaves, and cultivating the little patch of
garden-ground that lies round it--which will produce enough fruit and
vegetables for their own subsistence, and more besides, which they can
sell for clothes and tobacco. A day or two of this pleasant easy work
at their own ground will provide this, and they do not see why they
should labour as hired servants to get more. This is bad enough, think
the hacendados, but there is worse behind. The Indians have been of
late years becoming gradually aware that the government of the country
is quite rotten and powerless, and that in their own districts at
least, the power is very much in their own hands, for the few scattered
whites could offer but slight resistance. The doctrine of "America for
the Americans" is r