which is increased by bits of steel put on for the purpose.  Monstrous as the spurs now used are, they are small in comparison with those of a century or two ago.  One reads of spurs, of gold and silver, with rowels in the shape of five-pointed stars six inches in diameter.  These have quite gone out now, and seem to have been melted up, for they are hardly ever to be seen; but we bought at the baratillo of Mexico spurs of steel quite as large as this.

My companion sent to the Art-exhibition at Manchester a couple of pairs of the ordinary spurs of the country, such as we ourselves and everybody else wore.  They were put among the mediaeval armour, and excited great admiration in that capacity!

We slept at Nopalucan that night, and rode on next day to San Antonio de Abajo, a little out-of-the-way village at the foot of the mountain of Orizaba.  Our principal adventure in the day’s ride was that, finding that our road made a detour of a mile or so round a beautiful piece of green turf, we boldly struck across it, and nearly lamed our horses thereby; for the ground was completely undermined by moles, and at every third step the horses’ feet went into a deep hole.  We had to get off and lead them back to the road.

Orizaba is the great feature in the scenery of this district of Mexico.  It is one point in the line of volcanos which stretches across the continent from east to west.  It is a conical mountain, like Popocatepetl, and about the same height; measurements vary from twenty feet higher to sixty feet lower.  The crater has fallen in on one side, leaving a deep notch clearly visible from below.  At present, as we hear from travellers who have ascended it, the crater, like that of Popocatepetl, is in the condition of a solfatara, sending out jets of steam and sulphurous acid gas.  About three centuries ago its eruptions were frequent; and its Mexican name, Citlaltepetl, “Mountain of the Star,” carries us back to the time when it showed in the darkness a star-like light from its crater, like that of Stromboli at the present time, when one sees it from a distance.

San Antonio de Abajo is a quaint little village, frequented by muleteers and smugglers.  Tobacco, the principal contraband article, is grown in the plains just below; and, once carried up into the paths among the mountains, it is hard for any custom-house officer to catch sight of it.

When there was a government, there used sometimes to be fighting between the revenue-officers and the smugglers; but now, if there is a meeting, a few dollars will settle the disputed question to the satisfaction of both parties, so that the contraband trade, though profitable, is by no means so exciting as it used to be.

On the road towards San Antonio we saw ancient remains in the banks by the road-side, but had no time for a regular examination.  We slept on damp mattresses in a room of the inn, where the fowls roosted on the rafters above our heads, and walked over our faces in the early morning in an unpleasant manner.  We started before daybreak, and a descent down a winding road, through a forest of pines and oaks, brought us by seven in the morning from the region of pines and barley down to the district where tobacco and the sugar-cane flourish, at the level of 3,000 to 4,000 feet above the sea.