the Mexican lepers in his social
condition, and whose name implies the same thing; for, of course, Saint
Lazarus is the patron saint of lepers and foul beggars. There are some
few real lepers in Mexico, who are obliged by law to be shut up in this
hospital. We rather expected to see something like what one reads of
the treatment of lepers which prevailed in Europe until a few years
ago--shutting them up in dismal dens cut off from communication with
other human beings. We were agreeably disappointed. They were confined,
it is true, but in a spacious building, with court-yard and garden;
their nurses and attendants appeared to be very kind to them; and it
seems that many charitable people come to visit the inmates, and bring
them cigars and other small luxuries, to relieve the monotony of their
dismal lives. Some had their faces horribly distorted by the falling of
the corners of the eyes and mouth, and the disappearance of the
cartilage of the nose; and a few, in whom the disease had terminated in
a sort of gangrene, were frightful objects, with their features
scarcely distinguishable; but in the majority of cases the leprosy had
caused a gradual disappearance of the ends of the fingers and toes, and
even of the whole hands and feet. The limbs thus mutilated looked as
though the parts which were wanting had been amputated, and the wound
had quite healed over, but it is caused by a gradual absorption without
wound and without pain. As every one knows, leprosy of these kinds was
held until quite lately to be dangerously contagious; but, fortunately
for the poor creatures themselves, this is quite clearly proved to be
false, and the lepers are only shut up that they may have no children,
for the affection appears to be hereditary.

It was early one morning, when we were going out to breakfast at
Tisapan, that Don Juan recounted to us his experience of garrotted
malefactors sitting dead in their chairs in the great square across
which we were riding. "It was really almost enough to spoil a fellow's
breakfast," he added pathetically. Though an Englishman, and only
arrived in the country a few years before, Don Juan was as clever with
the lazo as most Mexicans, and could _colear_ a bull in great style.
Indeed, we had started early that morning in order to have time enough
to look at the bulls in the _potreros_--the great grass-meadows--that
lie for miles outside the city, and which are made immensely fertile by
flooding from