Twenty-six miles from Corralitos lay Casas Grandes, a place containing between two and three thousand inhabitants, and a fair type of the collection of ruins, partial ruins, patched ruins, ruins deserted, ruins inhabited, and a few passable adobe houses, that in Northern Mexico is dignified by the denomination, town. The site occupied by it appears to have been a favourite one from early times, some interesting ruins of Aztec buildings still remaining here, and traces of labour that must be referred to an even more remote date, occurring in the neighbourhood.

I had visited Casas Grandes twice without seeing the ruins (or "Casas Grandes de Montezuma," as they are called), when one morning I found myself in the company of the priest of the village. This functionary spoke some English—some Ollendorf, perhaps I should say—very little of which was intelligible, and still less coherent. But this did not seem to concern him. In an unfortunate moment I invited him to take some bottled beer at the principal store. He finished four bottles gaily, and was preparing to accept a further renewal of the invitation, when it occurred to me that, inasmuch as I did not drink beer, and the division of labour was scarcely a fair one, it would be wise to vary the entertainment. I proposed to visit the ruins, and leaving the shop we proceeded in the direction of the "big houses." The padre's somewhat high action, the moment that he began to feel the heat of the sun, reminded me a good deal of what Skippy had said about Mac's dancing: namely, that "he only touched on the high places as he went round the room." The successor of the Apostles dipped and soared, and set to every pig, passer-by, or obstruction in our way, with bewitching grace and lightness. It would not have surprised me at any moment to have seen him pause, cover his face in his mantle, and, after an interval of self-communion, burst into a prophetic denunciation of the degenerate inhabitants of the surrounding hovels. He was in that sort of mood. We reached the ruins, however, without this having occurred. To stand amidst such remarkable traces of past industry and civilisation, in company with an inebriated priest, a mouthpiece of the God of the race that expunged the Aztec authors of them from the list of nations, was not altogether without its moral.

The ruins still visible lie on the top of the artificial mounds on which the Aztecs often built, and extend over a wide surface. Doubtless they would still be in a state of much greater preservation but for the fact that the Mexicans have been accustomed to borrow materials from them, to employ in the construction of their houses and corrals. I am told that Coronado, who took part in the expedition of Cortez, refers to these remains in his history as being "already old;" but I have had no opportunity of consulting his work. The ruins that I saw seemed to be those of a large palace, or of some building of that nature, and were composed of blocks of a species of adobe cement, 18 x 18 x 24 inches in size. The rooms are long and rather narrow; some plaster still adheres to the walls in the interior of one of them. Judging from the elevation to which the walls still standing rise, the building appears to have been two or three storeys high—noteworthy evidence of architectural advance if the supposition be correct.

It seemed likely that the natives would from time to time have discovered Aztec relics here, but inquiry brought nothing of the kind to light, save some "oyas de Montezuma," earthenware pots of more or less fantastic shapes. The designs in black and red on some of them showed considerable finish and skill, and the things themselves were far superior to anything of the kind made in the country at the present time.

To turn from the Casas Grandes of the Aztecs to the modern town which derives its name from them, is to turn from ruined buildings to ruined people. In this instance the ruined people are certainly the more picturesque. Walls of mud, be they never so mighty, and dust, though it be the dust of ages, have not the charm of one of the little groups of loafers that may be seen at every street corner in a Mexican village. Bronze faces, luminous-eyed; hair, beards, and moustaches black as ravens' wings; big sombreros covered with tarnished silver braiding; deep-toned, rich-hued zarapas, contrasting with white (?) shirts, and perhaps a rose-coloured knot at the wearer's throat; great jangling spurs, braided breeches, a trailing lariat, a wreath or two of cigarette smoke, a bit of green foliage, deep shadows, golden sunlight; and all mellowed with dirt and perfect repose as a picture mellows with age. Turn where you will, such scenes may be found.

There are streets, it is true; but building and rebuilding have rendered their lines extremely vague. Here a householder has trenched upon the road for space for his pig-sty; there a wattled fence encloses a fowl-yard; yonder is a small corral built of old Aztec blocks; elsewhere, a stable-shed abuts upon the right of way. But none of the domestic animals for whom these offices have been built appear to inhabit them. A lean horse, with ribs protruding, stands, looking like a big knot, at one end of a raw-hide lasso, which, trailing loosely on the ground, is lost to sight inside the door of his master's hotel. Cows repose placidly in the thick dust of the path, chewing an apparently inexhaustible cud. Cocks and hens stalk here, there, and everywhere, in search of their precarious livelihood. There is a large floating population of dogs that have neither name nor home; and the pigs of a Mexican town (save in the instances of those obese monstrosities that are tethered out) have evidently a strolling license to go whithersoever they list. There are busy pigs and idle pigs, clean, dirty, blatant, pensive, friendly, and aggressive pigs, cynical pigs with cold, cruel, alligator eyes, pigs that look the very incarnation of sensualism, and pigs that look chaste and pure as matrons of old Rome.

Few animals have so human an eye as this unjustly despised benefactor of mankind. For my own part, although reluctantly confessing that vulgar prejudice has educated in me a preference for him when he has fallen into his baconage, I can never entirely overlook the debt of gratitude that is his due. Science has greater records than his; there are figures in statecraft, art, theology, and war, to whom it is the custom of giddy historians to assign greater prominence when recounting the world's great names; but of few can it be said that their unaided genius and research has awakened the taste of civilised humanity to a source of gratification so universally admitted, and so entirely free from alloy, as has the pig. For what, indeed, is the detecter of a new planet, the finder or conqueror of a new continent, beside the great discoverer of the truffle? Not for us is the planet, to new continents we are indifferent. These are vanities for our children to reach and cry for. But, as weary and disillusionised we drive "Life's sad post-horses o'er the dreary frontier of age," and Time, great proselytiser, gently turns the mind to solemn thoughts of turtle-fat and beaver-tail, water-rails and canvas-back ducks, caviare, foie gras, some fishes, and a few wines, the truffle will be found to be connected with most of our comfortablest dreams and sweetest hopes. Yet, how have we treated its inspired inventor? Have we cherished him, and encouraged his investigations? No! The sensitive, tip-tilted nose to which we owe so much has been ruthlessly pierced and torn. The iron hath entered into poor piggy's snout. The marvellous faculty possessed by him of going to the root of things is wantonly destroyed. He will never electrify us with another discovery, never present the epicurean world with another truffle. When I speak of the truffle, by the way, I no more allude to the usual dry chips of black leather of English dinner-tables than I should be referring to the London orange, if, with the memory of the glorious fruit of the gardens of Chio in my mind, I spoke of oranges.

I could linger for pages in any one of these Mexican towns—now sketching a smallpox-marked, villainous-visaged horse-thief, with the seat of a centaur, engaged in mid-street in breaking in a colt, barebacked, and bridled only with a hackamore; and, whilst the animal bucks and bucks untiringly, exchanging jokes and laughter with the idlers near; now depicting a dark-eyed, black-haired, slatternly seÑorita (not beautiful—that is extremely rare—but picturesque certainly), standing with her pail by the old derrick over the public well, in a cotton skirt of pink, a shawl or veil of similar though lighter colour covering her head and shoulders and falling to her waist, the whole vaguely reminding one of a cloud of apple-blossom; now describing the obscure interior of a cottage, and the group of women crouching round the wide, open hearth, crushing maize in the matate, or cooking one of their simple dishes; now picturing——But enough! As it is we proceed much too slowly; and many of the towns, ranches, Mormon camps, and scenes that I saw, will find no record in the limits that I have here assigned myself. For, when the originality of a generation may be registered in few lines, no book can be too short.