rs, and we bought some. They are of blue steel
inlaid with strips of silver, and the rowel is a sort of cogged wheel,
from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. _(See page 220.)_
They look terrific instruments, but really the cogs or points of the
rowels are quite blunt, and they keep the horse going less by hurting
him than by their incessant jingling, which is increased by bits of
steel put on for the purpose. Monstrous as the spurs now used are, they
are small in comparison with those of a century or two ago. One reads
of spurs, of gold and silver, with rowels in the shape of five-pointed
stars six inches in diameter. These have quite gone out now, and seem
to have been melted up, for they are hardly ever to be seen; but we
bought at the _baratillo_ of Mexico spurs of steel quite as large as
this.

My companion sent to the Art-exhibition at Manchester a couple of pairs
of the ordinary spurs of the country, such as we ourselves and
everybody else wore. They were put among the mediaeval armour, and
excited great admiration in that capacity!

We slept at Nopalucan that night, and rode on next day to San Antonio
de Abajo, a little out-of-the-way village at the foot of the mountain
of Orizaba. Our principal adventure in the day's ride was that, finding
that our road made a detour of a mile or so round a beautiful piece of
green turf, we boldly struck across it, and nearly lamed our horses
thereby; for the ground was completely undermined by moles, and at
every third step the horses' feet went into a deep hole. We had to get
off and lead them back to the road.

Orizaba is the great feature in the scenery of this district of Mexico.
It is one point in the line of volcanos which stretches across the
continent from east to west. It is a conical mountain, like
Popocatepetl, and about the same height; measurements vary from twenty
feet higher to sixty feet lower. The crater has fallen in on one side,
leaving a deep notch clearly visible from below. At present, as we hear
from travellers who have ascended it, the crater, like that of
Popocatepetl, is in the condition of a _solfatara_, sending out jets of
steam and sulphurous acid gas. About three centuries ago its eruptions
were frequent; and its Mexican name, _Citlaltepetl_, "Mountain of the
Star," carries us back to the time when it showed in the darkness a
star-like light from its crater, like that of Stromboli at the present
time, when one sees it from a distanc