error to those who do.
At present they are masters here. Their numbers, their proud confident
swagger, and the bold loud tone of their conversation, attest that they
are masters of the ground. Who are they?

Odd-looking, I have styled them; and the phrase is to be taken in its
full significance. A more odd-looking set of fellows never mustered in
a Mexican piazza, nor elsewhere. There are fourscore of them; and but
that each carries a yager rifle in his hand, a knife in his belt, and a
Colt's pistol on his thigh, you could not discover the slightest point
of resemblance between any two of them. Their arms are the only things
about them denoting _uniformity_, and some sort of organisation; for the
rest, they are as unlike one another as the various shapes and hues of
coarse broadcloth, woollen jeans, cottonades, coloured blankets, and
buckskin, can make them. They wear caps of 'coon-skin, and cat's-skin,
and squirrel; hats of beaver, and felt, and glaze, of wool and palmetto,
of every imaginable shape and slouch. Even of the modern monster--the
silken "tile"--samples might be seen, _badly crushed_. There are coats
of broadcloth, few in number, and well worn; but many are the garments
of "Kentucky jeans" of bluish-grey, of copper-coloured nigger cloth, and
sky-coloured cottonade. Some wear coats made of green blankets, others
of blue ones, and some of a scarlet red. There are hunting-shirts of
dressed deerskin, with plaited skirt, and cape, fringed and jauntily
adorned with beads and embroidery--the favourite style of the backwoods
hunter, but others there are of true Indian cut--open only at the
throat, and hanging loose, or fastened around the waist with a belt--the
same that secures the knife and pistol. There are cloth jackets too,
such as are worn by sailors, and others of sky-blue cottonade--the
costume of the Creole of Louisiana; some of red-brown leather--the
_jaqueta_ of the Spano-American; and still another fashion, the
close-fitting embroidered "spencer" of the Mexican ranchero. Some
shoulders are covered by serapes, and some by the more graceful and
toga-like manga. Look lower down: examine the limbs of the men of this
motley band: the covering of these is not less varied than their upper
garments. You see wrappers of coarse cloth, of flannel, and of baize:
they are blue, and scarlet, and green. You see leggings of raw hide and
of buckskin; boots of horse-leather reaching to the thighs; "nigger