compliment to him and Mrs. G. that we were accompanied by a party of English horsemen for the first two or three leagues.  Englishmen take much more easily to Mexican ways about horses than the Mexicans do to ours, and a finer turn-out of horses and riders than our amateur escort could hardly have been found in Mexico.  There was our friend Don Guillermo, who rode a beautiful horse that had once belonged to the captain of a band of robbers, and had not its equal in the city for swiftness; and Don Juan on his splendid little brown horse Pancho, lazoing stray mules as he went, and every now and then galloping into a meadow by the roadside after a bull, who was off like a shot the moment he heard the sound of hoofs.  I wonder whether I shall ever see them again, those jovial open-hearted countrymen of ours.  At last our companions said good-bye, and loaded pistols were carefully arranged on the centre cushion in case of an attack, much to the edification of my companion and myself, as it rather implied that, if fighting were to be done, we two should have to sit inside to be shot at without a chance of hitting anybody in return.

The hedges of the Organ Cactus are a feature in the landscape of the plains, and we first saw them to perfection on the road between Mexico and Pachuca.  This plant, the Cereus hexagonus, grows in Italy in the open air, but seems not to be turned to account anywhere except in Mexico for the purpose to which it is particularly suited.  In its wild state it grows like a candelabrum, with a thick trunk a few feet high, from the top of which it sends out shoots, which, as soon as they have room, rise straight upwards in fluted pillars fifteen or twenty feet in height.  Such a plant, with pillars rising side by side and almost touching one another, has a curious resemblance to an organ with its pipes, and thence its name “organo.”

To make a fence, they break off the straight lateral shoots, of the height required, and plant them closely side by side, in a trench, sufficiently deep to ensure their standing firmly; and it is a curious sight to see a labourer bearing on his shoulder one of these vegetable pillars, as high as himself, and carefully guarding himself against its spines.  A hedge perfectly impassable is obtained at once; the cactus rooting so readily, that it is rare to see a gap where one has died.  The villagers surround their gardens with these fences of cactus, which often line the road for miles together.  Foreigners used to point out such villages to us, and remark that they seemed “well organized,” a small joke which unfortunately bears translation into all ordinary European languages, and was inflicted without mercy upon us as new comers.

We reached Pachuca early in the afternoon, and took up our quarters in the inn there, and our friends went on to Real del Monte.