stations, and on one
day in the year numbers of pilgrims come to visit the place. Near the
top, the Indian lad who came with us showed us the mouth of a cavern,
which leads by subterranean passages under the sea to Rome--as caverns
not unfrequently do in Roman Catholic countries! What was more worth
noticing was that here there was a cypress-tree, covered with votive
offerings, like the great ahuchuete in the valley above Chalma; so that
it is likely that the place was sacred long before chapels and stations
were built upon it. Our guide told us that whenever a man touched the
tree, all feeling of weariness left him. How characteristic this
superstition is of a nation of carriers of burdens!

In the afternoon we started--ourselves, our guide, and an Indian to
carry cloaks, &c. up the mountain. We soon left the cultivated region,
and entered upon the pine-forest, which we never left during our
afternoon journey. One of the first showers of the rainy season came
down upon us as we rode through the forest. It only lasted half an
hour, but it was a deluge. In a shower of the same kind at Tezcuco, a
day or two before, rain to the amount of 1-1/10 inches fell in the
hour. By dusk we reached the highest habitation in North America, the
place where the sulphur used to be sublimed from the pumice brought
down from the crater. This place was shut up, for the undertaking has
been abandoned; but in a _rancho_ close by we found some Indian women
and children, and there we took up our quarters. The _rancho_ was a
circular hut, built and thatched with reeds, though in the midst of a
pine-forest; and presently a smart shower began, which came in upon us
as though the roof had been a sieve.

The Indian women were kneeling all the evening round the wood-fire in
the centre of the hut, baking _tortillas_ and boiling beans and coffee
in earthen pots. The wood was green, and the place was full of
suffocating smoke, except within eighteen inches of the ground, where
lay a stratum of purer air. We were obliged to lie down at once, upon
mats and serapes, for we could not exist in the smoke; and as often as
we raised ourselves into a sitting posture, we had to dive down again,
half suffocated. The line of demarcation was so accurately drawn that
it was like the Grotto del Cane, only reversed.

After a primitive supper in earthen bowls, we lay round the fire,
listening to the talk of our men and the Indian women. It was mostly
about adventure