lace, and is close to the canal. The products of the chinampas
are here displayed to the best advantage. As Mexico is within easy
marketing distance of the hot country, we have here daily presented the
fresh productions of two zones. This is one of the places where the
appetite of a stranger can not only be gratified with the greatest
variety of delicacies ever collected in one spot, but the excellency
and abundance of the articles presented are perplexing to the person
who would venture upon the bold experiment of tasting every new article
offered to him. As a vegetable and flower market, it has no equal.

THE ACORDADA.

The Acordada Prison is the principal state as well as city prison. Here
are confined men charged with every offense, from rioting to murder.
Oftentimes these extremes are found together in the interior court of
the prison, where the felon, with his hands steeped in innocent blood,
is entertaining a crowd of novices in crime with the details of his
adventures, and of his many hair-breadth escapes from the cruel
officers of the law. He is as eloquent in giving lessons to novices as
his compeers in our own prisons, and he carefully instructs his hopeful
pupils in the best ways of avenging their wrongs upon society. Some in
the prison are merry, and enjoy a dance, while others are indulging in
obscene jests and ribaldry. Still, there are those that find means to
labor and to work at repairing shoes or clothes in the midst of this
babel of sin and tumult.

The Acordada gave its name to that night insurrection to which I have
so often referred. Two regiments of artillery, quartered in the palace
of the Inquisition, _pronounced_ against the legality of the election
of Pedraza to the presidency. One night they took possession of the
Acordada, where they were joined by the whole body of desperadoes there
confined. Among the persons at that time detained in this prison, and
on that night wantonly killed, was an Englishman, who had been kept in
prison for several years, charged with the singular offense of having
married the daughter of an ex-marquis. There had been romance in his
courtship and romance in his marriage, but it had not met with the
approbation of the father, who unfortunately had influence enough to
get the newly-married man into prison, and to keep him there. At last
the father had relented, and on the next day the poor Englishman was to
have been set at liberty. Long and trying had been the s