e, prone.
Dismounting, I looped the long bridle over a projecting rock, and,
ascending the eminence, took hold of the fallen cross, exerting my
strength to raise it. It was large and heavy, and the footing on the
slippery rock made it difficult, but at length I managed to lift it up
and put it in position, piling heavy stones round its base to keep it
there. Engaged in this self-imposed task, I did not observe that my
horse--a spirited animal I had bought some months before--had freed its
bridle from the rock below, and when I looked round it was just
breaking into a gentle trot away across the desert! At this juncture
old Jose rode up with the mule-driver and took in the situation, and I
directed the latter individual to tie up his pack-mule and pursue my
horse at all speed. "This cross," said Jose, in response to my
questions, "was placed here when I was a boy," and he recounted how it
had been erected in memory of an old Spaniard, a rich landowner of that
region, who had been murdered there by the lover of his wife; she a
beautiful young Mexican woman. The details of the history are too long
to record here, but according to the legend current among the people,
which Jose recounted, the spirit of the penitent wife visited the cross
at evening, and hung a phantom wreath of white flowers upon it. "But,"
added the old _peon_, whose diction and ideas, notwithstanding his
superstition, were superior to his kind generally, "the cross has never
fallen before, and when from afar I saw the senor lifting it up I was
astonished. But it is a blessed act, and no evil can now befall the
senor!"

Inquiring what he meant by this, I learned that, in the opinion of the
natives of some regions, the raising up of a fallen cross secures
immunity from danger for him who has performed it for a season
afterwards! This belief of old Jose's seemed put to the test, in his
view, for half an hour afterwards, on crossing a steep-sided ravine, my
horse slipped and fell, and carried me down the almost vertical cliff
face for 50 feet or more. The sand and stones poured down in an
avalanche, but I kept my horse's head up, and we landed on the sandy
bottom below, unscratched, in a normal position! "The senor has been
saved because of the cross!" Jose and the _arriero_ both averred, after
congratulating me upon the almost miraculous escape from injury.

But the cross set up in Mexico means many things, and is always in
evidence among the lower orders.