My cicerone was the Rev. M. Cabell Martin, Rector of St. Clement's, El Paso, who drove me in his buggy over the frontier to Juarez and showed me all that was to be seen. It is astonishing what a change one sees in little more than a few yards of distance. Once across the bridge from El Paso, and you are in a new atmosphere. El Paso is like a New England town, after all; a little rough here and there, a little strange it may be, like the strangeness of the city pets, the alligators, who sleep in luxurious laziness in the public square; but yet it all was in our ways, and we were at home. But in Juarez all is different. As we drive along, two men by the roadside making adobe looked as if they might have been with the Israelites in Egypt at the same business. With their naked legs they were kneading up the black muck, which, when of the proper consistency, they deftly moulded into form for the great master workman, the sun, to dry at his leisure and pleasure. The streets of the town seemed bare. The shops were in most cases without windows or exterior openings, save the entrance door. The booths and stalls in the streets for cheap eatables, vegetables, pottery, and odds and ends had a wild, gypsy grace about them, all water-colors, ready to be painted, just as they were. We saw the post-office where Juarez kept up the government and existence of the Republic of Mexico during the whole of the Maximilian invasion. It was a close point to the United States for escape and liberty if he was molested. When Maximilian received his death-shot, Juarez went on with his presidency, taking no notice whatever of the usurpation as if it never had place. This man, of pure Indian blood, was certainly of heroic mould, and a stanch lover of light and liberty. We looked into the church, a most interesting old adobe building, with walls of immense thickness. The interior was a well-proportioned parallelogram of good height, with a grand wooden roof of carved beams of a dark hue, possibly black with age. We were told that the work had been all done by native workmen in ages past. Part of the doors in the same style, like Aztec work, had been ripped away and thrown outside to make way for a jimcrack gallery for singers. We longed to bring those old doorposts with us, and looked up with gratification at the roof as yet safe in its distance and old magnificence. The church walls had been all done up in whitewash, and the altar was adorned with saints and a Madonna decked out in real laces, satins, velvets, and jewelry, possibly real also. The effect of it all was bizarre and a trifle depressing.