der a cloud of smoke rising upward from the
blackened ashes.

Such was the fate of the insurrection stirred up by the priest Hidalgo.
From the little hamlet of Delores it had spread like fire over all the
vice-kingdom of New Spain; but very soon the leaders were almost to a
man made captives and shot--the venerable Hidalgo himself undergoing the
same sad fate. A remnant of the insurgents, pressed on all sides by the
royalist troops under General Calleja, had taken refuge in the little
town of Zitacuaro, where they were commanded by the Mexican general, Don
Ignacio Rayon. There they had established a _junta_, independent of the
government; and continued to launch forth their proclamations, powerless
as the glow of the prairie fire after its flames have been extinguished.

When such a fire, however, has been the work of men--when kindled by
man's will and for man's purpose--and not the result of accident or
spontaneity, then, indeed, the flames may be expected to burst forth
anew at some other point of the prairie or the forest.

Just so was it with the Mexican revolution. Another champion of
independence, of origin even more obscure than his predecessors--if that
were possible--soon appeared upon the arena which they had quitted, and
with an _eclat_ likely to eclipse any of those who had preceded him.

This was the curate of Caracuaro, he whom historians designate as "_El
insigne Morelos_" (the illustrious Morelos). The Mexican writers do not
state in what year Morelos was born. Judging from the portraits I have
seen of him, and comparing the different dates that have been assigned
to his birth, he should have been about thirty-eight or forty years old,
at the commencement of his career as a revolutionary leader. His native
place was Talmejo, a small hamlet near the town of Apatzingam, in the
state of Valladolid--now called _Morelia_, after the most illustrious of
its sons. The only patrimony of the future heir of the Mexican
independence was a small _recua_ of pack-mules, left him by his father,
who was a muleteer.

For a long time the son himself followed this humble and laborious
calling; when, for some reason or other, the idea came into his head to
enter holy orders. History does not say what was his motive for this
resolution; but certain it is that Morelos proceeded to carry it out
with that determined perseverance which was an essential trait in his
character.

Having sold off his mules, be consecra