on's visit.

Of these pleasant days in Cuernavaca she writes in a letter to her
daughter:

"I have a little plant from the garden where Carlota lived, which I
think is a climbing syringa. We go round nearly every evening to the
palace built by Cortes, in one room of which he strangled one of his
mistresses.... I had always supposed Maximilian to be a most exemplary
person, but he seems to have lived in a palace some three miles from
here with a beautiful Mexican girl, while poor Carlota was left alone
in town in the Borda Gardens.... Everybody goes barefoot here, though
all dressed up otherwise, and everybody wears the _rebozo_.[71] This
morning I killed a scorpion on the wall alongside the bed, and the
other day I also assisted in the killing of a tremendous tarantula in
the middle of the road. We stood far off and threw stones at it. None
of mine hit the mark, but I threw like mad.... I hope you were not
frightened by the news of the earthquake here. We got a good shake but
no harm done. Just a little south of us there has been terrible
damage--a whole town destroyed and people killed. Here all the people
ran into the streets, and kneeling, held out their hands towards the
churches that contain their miraculous images.... We have had a
'blessing of the animals' at the cathedral, where cats, dogs, eagles,
doves, cocks and hens, horses, colts, donkeys, cows and bulls, dyed
every color of the rainbow and wearing wreaths of artificial flowers
round their necks, were brought to receive this sacrament. I wanted to
take Burney [her little Scotch terrier], but feared his getting some
contagion, so gave it up, and now my Burney has forever lost the
chance of becoming a holy, blessed dog.... The native people here are
very abject, and seem almost entirely without intellect; yet they are
the only servants to be had unless one sends to California, and they
make life a desperate business. The only spirit I have seen in any of
them was to-day, when a native policeman tried to get up a fight
between his own huge dog and my little Burney. Of course Burney the
valiant was ready for the fray and would probably have disposed of the
big dog had I not run up, closing and clubbing my parasol as I came.
The policeman thought I was going to strike him, and for one second
stood up to me fiercely, saying 'No Senorita! No Senorita!' Then his
knees suddenly gave way and he and his dog and his friend who was
standing by to see fair play utterly