most valuable merchandise and precious metals is conducted. They form a very large proportion of the population, yet, by no similar class elsewhere are they exceeded in devoted honesty, punctuality, patient endurance, and skillful execution of duty. Nor is this the less remarkable when we recollect the country through which they travel—its disturbed state—and the opportunities consequently afforded for transgression. I have never been more struck with the folly of judging of men by mere dress and physiognomy, than in looking at the Arrieros. A man with wild and fierce eyes, tangled hair, slashed trowsers, and greasy jerkin that has breasted many a storm—a person, in fact, to whom you would scarcely trust an old coat when sending it to your tailor for repairs—is frequently in Mexico, the guardian of the fortunes of the wealthiest men for months, on toilsome journies among the mountains and defiles of the inner land. He has a multitude of dangers and difficulties to contend with. He overcomes them all—is never robbed and never robs—and, at the appointed day, comes to your door with a respectful salutation, and tells you that your wares or monies have passed the city gates. Yet this person is often poor, bondless and unsecured—with nothing but his fair name and unbroken word. When you ask him if you may rely on his people, he will return your look with a surprised glance, and striking his breast, and nodding his head with a proud contempt that his honor should be questioned, exclaim: "Soy José Maria, Señor, por veinte años Arriero de Mexico—todo el mundo me conoce!"
"I am José Maria, sir, I'd have you know—an Arriero of Mexico for twenty years—every body knows me!"
I regret, that I have been able to give only the faintest pencilling outline of Jalapa, which, with all its beauty, has doubtless hitherto been associated most nauseously in your mind with the drug growing in the neighborhood to which it has given its name.[1]
A beautiful scene, embracing nearly the whole of this little Eden, broke on me as we gained the summit of the last hill above the town. A dell, deep, precipitous, and green as if mossed from the margin of a woodland spring lay below me, hung on every side with orange trees in bloom and bearing, nodding palms and roses and acacias scenting the air with their fragrance, and peering out among the white walls of dwellings, convents, and steeples. In the next quarter of an hour, the mists that had been gathering around the mountains, whirled down on the peaks along which we were travelling, and as the wind occasionally drifted the vapor away, we could see around us nothing but wild plains and mountain spurs covered with volcanic debris, flung into a thousand fantastic forms, among which grew a hardy race of melancholy-looking pines, interspersed
- ↑ To give you an idea of the profusion of fruit in Jalapa I will state a fact. I gave a French servant a real (twelve and a half cents) to purchase me a few oranges, and in a short time he returned with a handkerchief bursting under the load—he had received forty for the money. I told the story to a Jalapanian with surprise: "They cheated him" said he: "nearly double the number."
