y instinct, I found it convenient to go unarmed. Upon the
present occasion, I did not wish to raise a smile of incredulity by
protesting that I had never fired a pistol in my life, so I quietly
consented to play the part of hero.

By displaying my weapon carelessly in my hand when we stopped to take
coffee at Saint Martin's, I procured a seat upon the outside, which had
been refused me at Puebla.

Our escort consisted of a body of six lancers, who, standing at the
roadside, saluted us as we passed, and then rode after us at the top of
their speed. Poor fellows! they found it hard riding to keep up with
the coach. It was some consolation for them to see a man seated on the
top of the stage with a Colt's pistol, even if he did not know how to
use it, and for once they rode out their beat without getting
frightened at their shadows. As the robbers were as great cowards as
themselves, whether the man on the box was really a fire-eater or not,
it answered the same purpose. These stage-guards are heroes in their
way; they always come when the road appears the safest, and never fail
to ask for charity, but invariably leave you just as the coach
approaches a thicket. A few days ago, this guard caught a fellow on the
road whom they believed to be a robber, and hung him with a
pocket-handkerchief.

REPUBLIC OF TLASCALA.

We are now passing the borders of that famous Indian republic, of the
high table-land, which shut out despotism by a lofty wall,[16] and was
so completely isolated in the times of Montezuma that its people could
obtain no foreign products, not even cotton or salt;[17] whose food was
the maize which they cultivated, and the game which they caught upon
the snow-capped mountains; whose clothing was made from the maguey, and
from skins of animals taken in the chase; a people whose government was
a council of elders, which was presided over by an hereditary chief;
whose political institutions have been the study and admiration of the
learned of many lands. That is, in plain English, they were an ordinary
tribe of North American savages, obtaining their living, as other
Indians did then and do now, by the cultivation of Indian corn and
hunting, having the same crude form of government that is common to all
the savage tribes of North America. They gloried in their savage
notions of independence, and submitted only to the merest shadow of
authority. They had not yet reached that point of social organization
at whi