cities or towns, where we were made more or less comfortable; but on one
occasion, owing to an accident, we were belated and had to stop
overnight at a miserable hamlet, where no accommodation could be
procured save such as a native adobe house could afford. This consisted
of one large room approached by a shed. In this room the man, his wife,
his children, his dogs, pigs, and small cattle lived. A team of mules
outside put in their heads through an opening and breathed over our
cots. The English language cannot be made to describe the atmosphere and
other horrors of that night. Cots had been improvised for Mrs. D---- and
me, but there was no sleep for us, and we envied the men, who took their
chances of malaria and preferred sleeping outside to sharing our
shelter.

At last we reached the crest of the mountain from which we looked down
upon the valley of Mexico, a huge basin encircled by mountains; and
there at our feet lay the capital, with its two hundred thousand souls,
its picturesque buildings, and the lakes of Chalco and Tezcuco, while to
one side the huge snow-capped volcanoes, the Iztaccihuatl and the
Popocatepetl, like two gigantic sentries, seemed to watch over the
sacredness of this classical spot of Mexican history.

The capital was quiet and peaceful. It seemed utterly shut out from all
the excitement created by the invasion, as though, really trusting in
its remoteness, its barriers of mountains, its lakes and natural
defenses, it defied the foreigner. Was it that Mexico was then so
accustomed to transfer its allegiance from one military ruler to the
other that even foreign invasion left it indifferent? Or was it the
childlike faith in the unknown, the national Quien sabe? spirit,
virtually carried out at this supreme crisis? However this may have
been, very little of the outside conflict seemed as yet to have