Again on the road, with the husband of the
little baby-mother for guide, who, by the way, was a most consummate
scamp, incessantly urging me to make a short detour of five or six
leagues, to dance all night at a fandango; and on taxing him with his
gallivanting, and inconstant disposition among the softer sex, he
replied, with an air of triumph,--_O! yo he enganado muchas!_--Bless
you, I've broken the hearts of dozens--although he did not inspire me
with being so determined a Lothario as he himself believed.

On we spurred, and urged the jaded steeds some leagues further, when we
came upon the rancho of Carlos Castro. I was half famished from a long
day's fast, but there was neither bread nor edible matter in the hut.
At last the buxom mistress asked me, _Quiere huevos?_--have an
egg;--_caramba! si amiga!_--Why did not you tell me of this before? She
was good enough to boil exactly fourteen, hard as bullets, but, what is
equally incredible, I ate them all without salt; and then being in good
humor with all the world, threw a peso in the kind Senora's lap, and
with a lively adios, turned our horses' heads again towards the north
star. The moon was riding high, round, and gleaming as the silver dollar
I had just thrown the good lady, flooding the whole lovely plain, with
its waving fields of yellow oats, and magnificent clusters of oaks, in
one continuous vista of unexampled beauty. Five leagues beyond we struck
off to the right, and after losing our path repeatedly, amid beds of
water-courses, and bolls of trees, and when I was on the point of giving
orders for a night bivouac on the sweet and yielding grain, we became
aware of our proximity to a habitation by the usual barking diapason of
half an hundred dogs and curs, and I was not sorry to swing my weary
limbs from the saddle after a hard ride of eighty miles. In a few
minutes I was stretched beside the proprietor of the rancho, Mr. Murphy,
and as kind a specimen of the true Milesian as ever took leave of the
Hill of Hoath. I knew that by the kindly tone of his voice; but I fell
sound asleep, giving the old gentleman an account of the battle of Cerro
Gordo, and never moved until long after sunrise. On awaking, I found
myself in a dwelling constructed of pickets, driven perpendicularly into
the ground, the apertures filled in with mud, and all covered by a
roughly-thatched roof. The enclosure was rather a primitive, and I
should judge temporary affair, to serve the fir