e
moschetoes.

Don Simon threw himself into one of the hammocks, and held out one of
his legs, which was covered with burrs and briers. These men were free
and independent electors of the State of Yucatan; but one of them took
in his hand Don Simon's foot, picked off the burrs, pulled off the
shoe, cleaned the stocking, and, restoring the shoe, laid the foot back
carefully in the hammock, and then took up the other. It was all done
as a matter of course, and no one bestowed a thought upon it except
ourselves.

On one side of the clearing was a great pile or small mountain of corn
in the ear, ready to be threshed, and near by was the threshing
machine, which certainly could not be considered an infringement of any
Yankee patent right. It was a rude scaffold about eighteen or twenty
feet square, made of four untrimmed upright posts for corners, with
poles lashed to them horizontally three or four feet from the ground,
and across these was a layer of sticks, about an inch thick, side by
side; the whole might have served as a rude model of the first bedstead
ever made.

The parallel sticks served as a threshing floor, on which was spread a
thick layer of corn. On each side a rude ladder of two or three rounds
rested against the floor, and on each of these ladders stood a nearly
naked Indian, with a long pole in his hand, beating the corn. The
grains fell through, and at each corner under the floor was a man with
a brush made of bushes, sweeping off the cobs. The shelled corn was
afterward taken up in baskets and carried to the hacienda. The whole
process would have surprised a Genesee farmer; but perhaps, where
labour was so little costly, it answered as well as the best threshing
machine that could be invented.

The next day we had another welcome visiter in our fellow-passenger,
Mr. Camerden, who was just from Campeachy, where he had seen New-York
papers to the third of November. Knowing our deep interest in the
affairs of our country, and postponing his own curiosity about the
ruins, he hastened to communicate to us the result of the city
elections, viz., a contest in the sixth ward and entire uncertainty
which party was uppermost.

Unfortunately, Mr. Camerden, not being in very good health at the time,
was also infected with apprehensions about Uxmal, and as El Norte still
continued, the coldness and rain made him uneasy in a place of such
bad reputation. Having no ill feelings against him and no spare
moscheto-