his year, and, though June had begun, there
were but few cases. We heard afterwards that it set in a week or two
after our departure, and by its extraordinary severity made ample
amends for the lateness of its arrival.

After sunset, the air was alive with mosquitos, and the floors of the
hotel swarmed with cockroaches. The armadillo took quite naturally to
the latter creatures, and crunched them up as fast as we could catch
them for him. I was surprised to find that our word "cockroaches" does
not come from the German stock, like most of our names for insects and
small creatures, but from the Latin side of the house. The Spanish
waiter called them _cucarachas_, and the French ones _coqueraches_. The
history of the armadillo ends unfortunately: for some days he seemed to
take quite kindly to the diet of bits of meat which we had to put him
on, on shipboard, but he fell sick at Havana, and died.

My late companion travelled up into the Northern States, went to the
Indian assembly at Manitoulin Island, paid a visit to various tribes of
Red Men in the Hudson's Bay Territory--as yet unmissionized, carried
away in triumph the big medicine-drum I have already spoken of, and saw
and did many other things not to be related here. One sight that he
saw, some months later, reminded him of the wild country where we had
travelled together. He was in Iowa City, a little town of a year or
two's growth, out in the prairie States of the Far West. As he stood
one morning in the outskirts, among the plank-houses and half-made
roads, there came a solitary horseman riding in. Evidently he had come
from the Mexican frontier, a thousand miles and more away across the
plains; and no doubt, his waggons and the rest of his party were behind
him on the road, beyond the distant horizon of the prairie. By his face
he was American, but his costume was the dress of old Mexico, the
leather jacket and trousers, the broad white hat and huge jingling
spurs. His lazo hung in front of his high-peaked saddle, and his
well-worn serape was rolled up behind him like a trooper's cloak. As he
approached the town, he spurred his jaded beast, who broke into the old
familiar _paso_ of the Mexican plains. "It was my last sight of
Mexico," said my companion. He saluted the horseman in Spanish, and the
well-known words of welcome made the grim man's haggard sunburnt
features relax into a smile as he returned the salutation and rode on.

As for myself, my voyage home