Outside this privileged enclosure was a group of
from twenty to thirty huts, composing a species of little village.
These were inhabited by the day-labourers (peons) and their families
attached to the hacienda--who, in case of danger, would escape within
the enclosure for safety and protection.

Such was the Hacienda del Venado. The proprietor, Don Augustin Pena,
was a man of great opulence. In addition to a rich gold mine which he
worked, at no great distance off, he was the owner of countless herds of
horses, mules, and cattle, that in a half-wild state roamed over the
vast savannahs and forests that constituted the twenty leagues of land
belonging to the hacienda. Such a vast tract of territory belonging to
one man is by no means a rare thing in northern Mexico.

At this time Don Augustin was a widower, and his family consisted of
only one daughter--the young girl already introduced to the reader.
Considering the immense heritage that the Dona Rosario--or, as she was
more gracefully called, Rosarita--was likely to bring to whoever should
become her husband, it was natural that an alliance with Don Augustin
should be the object of many an ambition; in fact her beauty without the
grand fortune--which, at her father's death, she was to become mistress
of--would of itself have been enough to have challenged a crowd of
pretenders to her hand.

The Andalusian type has lost nothing in the northern provinces of
Mexico. Its purity of outline is there associated with freshness of
colour, and this happy mixture of graces was exhibited in the beautiful
countenance of Rosarita. We have described her with black eyes and hair
of raven hue; but hers was a beauty that words can but faintly portray,
and about which all description would be superfluous.

And this lovely creature bloomed in the very midst of the desert, like
the flower of the cactus which blossoms and fades under the eye of God
alone.

The immense plain in the midst of which stood the Hacienda del Venado
presented a double aspect. In front of the house only did the ground
show any traces of cultivation. On that side fields of Indian corn and
vast olive plantations denoted the presence and skilful labour of man.

Behind the hacienda--at some hundred paces distance from the stockade--
the clearing ended, and thence extended the virgin forest in all its
sombre and primitive majesty.

The cultivated ground was intersected by a considerable stream of water.
D