ad its effect upon
the bisco, who rolled his eye toward the door so violently that the
rest of him followed, and he never came near the doctor again. His only
operation that day was upon the wife of the proprietor of San
Francisco, whose head he laid open, and took out a hideous wen.

I have mentioned the extraordinary stillness of this place. Every
night, however, since my arrival, this stillness had been broken by the
canting, singing tones of a boy calling out the numbers of the loteria.
Preparations were making for a village fete in February; the ground was
already marked out in front of the convent for the Plaza de Toros and
the loteria was adopted as the means of raising money to pay the
expenses. I had not yet attended, and on the last night of my stay in
Ticul I determined to go. It was held in the corridor of the audiencia,
along which hang branches of palm leaves to protect the lights. It was
Sunday evening, and, consequently, the attendance was more numerous
than usual. At the entrance sat the boy, whose voice is even now
ringing in my ears, rattling a bag of balls, drawing them out, and
calling off the numbers. Along the corridor was a rough table with a
row of candles in the centre, and benches on each side were occupied by
the villagers, without distinction of persons, with papers and grains
of corn before them, the same as at Merida. The largest sum called off
was twenty-nine reals. One real was deducted from every dollar for the
particular object of the lottery, and the fund which the boy had
obtained by such a potent use of his voice then amounted to sixty-three
dollars. There were several performers giving out somewhat equivocal
music, without which nothing in that country could go on long, and
occasionally two reals were drawn from the purse for them. All entered
who pleased. There was no regulation of dress or etiquette, but much
quiet courtesy of manner, and it was regarded a mere converzatione, or
place for passing the evening. I remained about an hour. As we crossed
the plaza, the moon lighted up the venerable front of the convent, and
for the last time I slept within its walls.

The next morning I bade farewell to the cura, with an understanding,
that as soon as Doctor Cabot was able to return, the good padre would
accompany him to finish his interrupted visit to us at Uxmal. My time
at Ticul had not been lost. Besides exploring the ruins of San
Francisco, I had received accounts of others from