perhaps seventeen, large and muscular, an evil gleam in his eye, edged
his way up to me with one arm behind him and added his demands to that
of the other. I suddenly pulled the hidden hand into sight and found in
it a sharp broken piece of rock weighing some ten pounds. Having
knocked this out of his grasp, I laid my automatic across my knees and
the more sober pair dragged the belligerent youth on up the mountain
trail.

For an hour the way wound down by steep, horribly cobbled descents, then
between mud and stone huts, and finally down a more level and wider
cobbled street along which were the rails of a mule tramway. The narrow
city wound for miles along the bottom of a deep gully, gay everywhere
with perennial flowers. The main avenue ran like a stream along the
bottom, and he who lost himself in the stair-like side streets had only
to follow downward to find it again as surely as a tributary its main
river. Masses of rocky mountains were piled up on all sides.

The climate of Guanajuato is unsurpassed. Brilliant sunshine flooded
days like our early June, in which one must hurry to sweat in the noon
time, while two blankets made comfortable covering at night. This is
true of not only one season but the year around, during which the
thermometer does not vary ten degrees. July is coldest and a fireplace
not uncomfortable in the evening. An American resident who went home to
one of the States bordering on Canada for his vacation sat wiping the
sweat out of his eyes there, when one of his untraveled countrymen
observed:

"You must feel very much at home in this heat after nine years in
Mexico."