So am I. Horace, being a confirmed bachelor, probably took his theme from some early love affair which would serve as a key-note that would strike at the heart and experience of almost every reader. The apparent ease with which one can make money and enjoy trips in Mexico is scarcely less deceptive than were the bewitching smiles of Horace's Pyrrha. Indeed the fortune-seeker there can see chimerical Pyrrhas everywhere. [1] It was customary for the shipwrecked sailor to deposit in the temple of the divinity to whom he attributed his escape, a votive picture (_tabula_) of the occurrence, together with his clothes, the only things which had been saved. Although it has been said that truth is stranger than fiction, it is observable that most of the great writers have won their fame in fiction, possibly because they could not find truths enough to fill a volume. In setting down the narrative of a journey through Mexico, however, there is no occasion to distort facts in order to make them appear strange, and often incredible, to the reader. We are so surfeited with books of fiction that I sometimes feel it is a wholesome diversion to pick up a book containing a few facts, even though they be stated in plain homespun language. It is fair to assume that in writing a book the author's chief purpose is to convey a message of some sort in language that is understandable. In the following pages I have therefore not attempted any flourishes with the English language, but have simply recorded the facts and impressions in a discursive conversational style, just as I should relate them verbally, or write them in correspondence to some friend. H. H. H. Boston, Mass., October, 1909. INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY CHARLES E. HURD