y good roads, another five
miles, to the Escalera. I wish they would make Mexican saddles of
something else besides wood very thinly covered with leather. How
devoutly did I long for the well-stuffed pig-skin of Hyde Park! We had
an hour or two more hard work riding about the fields, when we reached
the farm, watching the process of extracting _pulque_ from the _maguey_
or cactus,--and a very nasty process it is,--inspecting the granaries
belonging to the _hacienda_, and dodging between the rows of Indian
corn, which grows here to so prodigious a height as to rival the famous
grain which is said to grow somewhere down South, and to attain such an
altitude that a Comanche perched upon the head of a giraffe is invisible
between the rows. About noon we had breakfast, and that was the hardest
work of all. _Item_, we had mutton-chops, beefsteaks, veal cutlets,
omelets, rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity of Mexican hashes
and stews seasoned with _chiles_ or red-pepper pods. _Item_, we had a
huge _pavo_, a turkey,--a wild turkey; and then, for the first time, did
I understand that the bird we Englishmen consume only at Christmas, and
then declare to be tough and flavorless, is to be eaten to perfection
only in the central regions of the American continent. The flesh of this
_pavo_ was like softened ivory, and his fat like unto clotted cream.
There were some pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way of pine-apples,
musk-melons, bananas, papaws, and custard-apples, and many other
tropical fruits whose names I have forgotten. I think, too, that we had
some stewed _iguana_ or lizard; but I remember, that, after inflicting
exemplary punishment on a bowl of sour cream, we wound up by an attack
on an _albacor_, a young kid roasted whole, or rather baked in a lump of
clay with wood-ashes heaped over him, and brought to table on a
tea-tray! Shade of Gargantua, how we ate! I blessed that fiery Arab for
giving me such an appetite. There was a good deal of smoking going on at
odd times during breakfast; but nobody ventured beyond a _cigarro_ of
paper and fine-cut before we attacked the _albacor_. When coffee was
served, each man lighted a _puro_, one of the biggest of Cabana's
Regalias; and serious and solemn puffing then set in. It was a memorable
breakfast. The _Administrador_, or steward of the estate, had evidently
done his best to entertain his patron the Don with becoming
magnificence, nor were potables as dainty as the edibl