d can no longer be considered merely experimental, Owen or Fourier
might perhaps take lessons from them with advantage.

They differ from professed reformers in one important particular--they
seek no converts. No stranger is allowed, upon any consideration, to
enter their community; every member must marry within the rancho, and
no such thing as a marriage out of it had ever occurred. They said it
was impossible; it could not happen. They were in the habit of going to
the villages to attend the festivals; and when we suggested a
supposable case of a young man or woman falling in love with some
village Indian, they said it might happen; there was no law against it;
but none could _marry_ out of the ranch. This was a thing so little
apprehended that the punishment for it was not defined in their penal
code; but being questioned, after some consultation they said that the
offender, whether man or woman, would be expelled. We remarked that in
their small community constant intermarriages must make them all
relatives, which they said was the case since the reduction of their
numbers by the cholera. They were, in fact, all kinsfolk, but it was
allowable for kinsfolk to marry except in the relationship of brothers
and sisters. They were very strict in attendance upon the ceremonies of
the Church, and had just finished the celebration of the carnival two
weeks in advance of the regular time; but when we corrected their
chronology, they said they could celebrate it over again.

Early in the morning we set out for the ruins of Zayi, or Salli. At a
short distance from the rancho we saw in an overgrown milpa on our left
the ruins of a mound and building, so far destroyed that they are not
worth presenting.

After proceeding a mile and a half we saw at some distance before us a
great tree-covered mound, which astonished us by its vast dimensions,
and, but for our Indian assistants, would have frightened us by the
size of the trees growing upon it. The woods commenced from the
roadside. Our guides cut a path, and, clearing the branches overhead,
we followed on horseback, dismounting at the foot of the Casa Grande.
It was by this name that the Indians called the immense pile of white
stone buildings, which, buried in the depths of a great forest, added
new desolation to the waste by which they were surrounded. We tied our
horses, and worked our way along the front. The trees were so close
that we could take in but a small portion of