should return home at once, or await developments. Meanwhile the room had become filled almost to suffocation with the sulphur fumes, the burning sulphur had melted the solder off the tin vessel, and running out had set the floor on fire. About this time there was a vigorous rap at the door and some one asked a question in Spanish; but none of us could either ask or answer questions in that language, so there was no chance for an argument and we all kept quiet, except for the scuffling around in the endeavor to extinguish the fire. The water-pitcher being empty, as usual, some one seized my new overcoat and threw it over the flames. At this juncture our interpreter returned and informed us that it was no joke about the sick man, and that the police authorities had just discovered him and ordered him to the hospital. He found that the boatman had already had smallpox and was not afraid of it; he was quite surprised at our sudden alarm. As the interpreter came in, the man who had knocked reappeared, and said that having smelled the sulphur fumes he thought someone was committing suicide. When we told him what had happened he laughed hysterically, but unfortunately we were unable to share the funny side of the joke with him. [2] The reader should not confound this with other Tuxpams and Tuxpans in Mexico. The name of this place is nearly always misspelled, Tuxpan, with the final _n_; it is so spelled even in the national post-office directory; but it is correctly spelled with the final _m_. That evening when we went down to supper everybody seemed to regard us with an air of curious suspicion, and we imagined that we were tagged all over with visible smallpox bacteria.