ntial inhabitants. He was not then
in public office, but he was highly connected. One of his brothers was
first alcalde, and another keeper of the gambling-table.

We considered his attentions for the evening at an end, but in a short
time he entered abruptly, and with a crowd at his heels. This time he
was really welcome, for he called us out to look at a lunar rain bow,
which the people, looking at it in connexion with our visit and its
strange objects, considered rather ominous, and Don Juan himself was
not entirely at ease; but it did not disturb the gentlemen around the
gambling-table, who had, in the mean time, to avoid the night air,
moved under the shed of the proprietor, Don Juan's brother and our
landlord.

The next morning a short time enabled us to see all the objects of
interest in the new village of Iturbide. Five years before the plough
had ran over the ground now occupied by the plaza, or, more literally,
as the plough is not known in Yucatan, the plaza is on the ground
formerly occupied by an old milperia, or cornfield. In those ancient
days it was probably enclosed by a bush fence; now, at one corner rises
a thatched house, with an arbour before it, and a table under the
arbour, at which, perhaps, at this moment the principal inhabitants are
playing monte. Opposite, on the other corner, stood, and still stands
if it has not fallen down, a casa de paja (thatched house) from which
the thatching had been blown away, and in which were the undisposed-of
remains of an ox for sale. Along the sides were whitewashed huts, and
on one corner a large, neat house, belonging to our friend Senor Trego;
then a small edifice with a cross in the roof, marking it as a church;
and, finally, an open casa publica, very aptly so called, as it had no
doors. Such are the edifices which in five years have sprung up in the
new village of Iturbide; and attached to each house was a muddy yard,
where large black pigs were wallowing in the mire, the special objects
of their owner's care, soon to become large black hogs, and to bring
ten or twelve dollars a piece in the Campeachy market. But, interesting
as it is to watch the march of improvement, it was not for these we had
come to Iturbide. Within the plaza were memorials of older and better
times, indications of a more ingenious people than the civilized whites
by whom it is now occupied. At one end was a mound of ruins, which had
once supported an ancient building; and in the ce