time our interpreter appeared, and three soldiers in white uniforms came rushing up to us and enquired where the fire was. My companions explained to the soldiers, through the interpreter, that it was only a practical joke they had played on me. It now became my turn to laugh, for they were both placed under arrest and taken before the magistrate, charged with disturbing the peace and starting a false alarm of fire. When the interpreter explained the matter to the magistrate that official lost his dignity for a moment and laughed outright. He was a good-natured old fellow (an unusual characteristic, I understand, among Mexican magistrates) and appreciated the joke even more than I did. He recovered his dignity and composure long enough to give us an impressive warning not to play any more such pranks, and dismissed the case. Our baggage did not arrive until five days later, and was soaking wet, as the boatman said he had encountered a gale in which he had barely escaped inundation. There was an American merchant in Tuxpam by the name of Robert Boyd, whose store was the headquarters of all Americans, both resident and traveling. Had we talked with Mr. Boyd before going to Mexico there would have been no occasion for writing this narrative. He was an extremely alert trader and in his thirty years' residence, by conducting a general store and trafficking in such native products as _chicle_ (gum,--pronounced chickly), hides, cedar, rubber and vanilla, which he shipped in small quantities to New York, he had accumulated about $50,000 (Mexican). We had expected to make on an average that sum for every day we spent in Mexico, and were astonished that a man of his commanding appearance and apparent ability should be running a little store and doing a small three-penny[7] business. Three months later we would have concluded that any American who could make fifty thousand dollars by trading with Mexicans for thirty years is highly deserving of a bronze monument on a conspicuous site. For clever trading in a small way, the Mexican is as much ahead of the average Yankee as our present methods of printing are ahead of those employed in Caxton's time. They are exceedingly cunning traders and will thrive where even the Italian fruit-vender would starve.