rived at an Indian village called Tierra Colorada. The house we put up at was a dismal contrast to the one we had left in the morning. The mother was dirty and decrepit; two or three miserable ill-formed children, all of them affected with the gôitre, or swelled neck, and one child which was dumb and idiotish, were the inmates of this afflicted abode. I do not know how it was, but the latter of these objects, a little girl of five years old, was the only one I could endure to look at, or of whose services I could bear to accept. The child discovered my preference, and called forth all its vigour to do justice to my partiality. I made signs for what I wanted, and rewarded it with small pieces of money as my commissions were severally executed. Sometimes it would stand puzzling and perplexing itself for a moment, and then run off to do my bidding, with an alacrity and energy exceeding its tender years.
By eleven o'clock the next morning we had reached a spot called Alto Cameron, with a solitary house on the side of a steep
