arbour. Sitting down under the arbour, with our hotel on this ancient
platform, we had seldom experienced higher satisfaction on reaching a
new and unknown field of ruins, though perhaps this was owing somewhat
to the circumstance of finding ourselves, after a hot and perplexing
ride, safely arrived at our place of destination. We had still two
hours of daylight; and, anxious to have a glimpse of the ruins before
night, we had some fried eggs and tortillas got ready, and while making
a hasty meal, the proprietor of the rancho, attended by a party of
Indians, came to pay us a visit.

[Engraving 14: Casa Real of Kewick]

This proprietor was a full-blooded Indian, the first of this ancient
but degraded race whom we had seen in the position of land-owner and
master. He was about forty-five years old, and highly respectable in
his appearance and manners. He had inherited the land from his fathers,
did not know how long it had been transmitted, but believed that it had
always been in his family. The Indians on the rancho were his servants,
and we had not seen in any village or on any hacienda men of better
appearance, or under more excellent discipline. This produced on my
mind a strong impression that, indolent, ignorant, and debased as the
race is under the dominion of strangers, the Indian even now is not
incapable of fulfilling the obligations of a higher station than that
in which his destiny has placed him. It is not true that he is fit only
to labour with his hands; he has within him that which is capable of
directing the labour of others; and as this Indian master sat on the
terrace, with his dependants crouching round him, I could imagine him
the descendant of a long line of caciques who once reigned in the city,
the ruins of which were his inheritance. Involuntarily we treated him
with a respect we had never shown to an Indian before; but perhaps we
were not free from the influence of feelings which govern in civilized
life, and our respect may have proceeded from the discovery that our
new acquaintance was a man of property, possessed not merely of acres,
and Indians, and unproductive real estate, but also of that great
desideratum in these trying times, ready money; for we had given Albino
a dollar to purchase eggs with, who objected to it as too large a coin
to be available on the rancho, but on his return informed us, with an
expression of surprise, that the master had changed it the moment it
was offered to h