Senor Cordova had forgotten
his promise, we were prepared to leave town early the next morning.
After dark two men came from Tlaxiaco, one of whom brought sufficient
plaster for making two good busts. This plaster had been brought, in
a crude state, twenty miles from the mountains to Tlaxiaco; had been
calcined and ground there, by prisoners in the jail, and then sent
fifteen miles to us over the mountains. We were interested in the men
who brought it. One of them was a prisoner from the Tlaxiaco jail. He
had been sentenced to ten days for drinking, and it was he who carried
the plaster. The other proudly informed us that he was a policeman, and
had come to make sure that the prisoner returned. Thoroughly delighted
at their coming, we broke our custom and gave the men a trifle. Alas,
the day! That very night both men, policeman and prisoner, were thrust
into the local jail, helplessly drunk.

One evening, during our stay at Chicahuastla, Don Guillermo begged me
to go into the kitchen to examine a baby, upon whom he was thinking
of performing a surgical operation. The creature was a boy some three
months old, pure indian. We had heard him crying at night ever since
we had come, but had not seen him. A tumor, or some growth, was on his
neck, below the chin. Don Guillermo handed me the razor, in order that
I might remove the swelling, but I refused the task. The story of the
child is sad. It is the son of a young indian boy and girl, not married.
That would not be a serious matter among the Triquis. For some reason,
however, the mother did not like the child, and scarcely was it born,
when she went with it into the forest; there in a lonely place she
choked it, as she thought, to death, and buried it in the ground. The
town authorities, suspecting something of her purpose, had followed her
and were watching at the moment. No sooner had she left the spot than
they dug up the child, found it still alive, and brought it to Don
Guillermo, who had kept it at the town's charge.

The last night of our stay at Chicahuastla, just after supper,
a cavalcade came to the door. It was the _jefe_ of the next
district--Juxtlahuaca--with a guard of six mounted men. Apparently a
pleasant fellow, he was at the moment excited over a recent disturbance
in his district. In an attempt which he had made to adjust a certain
difficulty, he and his guard had been fired on and stones thrown
from the height above them, by the people of the pueblo. O