Our start, every time we changed horses, was a sight to see. Nine half-broken horses and mules, in a furious state of excitement, were harnessed to our unwieldy machine; the helpers let go, and off they went, kicking, plunging, rearing, biting, and screaming, into ruts and watercourses that were like the trenches they make for gas-pipes in London streets, with our wheels on one side on a stone wall, and in a pit on the other, and Black Sam leaning back with his feet on the board, waiting with perfect tranquillity until the animals had got rid of their superfluous energy and he could hold them in. We were always just going to have some frightful accident, and always just missed it. The last stage before we reached Otumba, a small dusky urchin ran across the road just before us. How Black Sam contrived to pull up I cannot tell, though, indeed, his arms were about the size of an ordinary man’s thighs; but he did, and they got the child out from the horses’ feet quite unhurt. It was at the inn where we stopped to breakfast that we made our first acquaintance with the great Mexican institutions—tortillas and pulque. The pulque was being brewed on a large scale in an adjoining building. The vats were made of cow-skins (with the hair inside), supported by a frame of sticks; and in them was pulque in every stage, beginning with the sweet aguamiel—honeywater—the fresh juice of the aloe, and then the same in different degrees of fermentation till we come to the _madre pulque_, the mother pulque, a little of which is used like yeast, to start the fermentation, and which has a combined odour of gas-works and drains. Pulque, as you drink it, looks like milk and water, and has a mild smell and taste of rotten eggs. Tortillas are like oat-cakes, but made of Indian corn meal, not crisp, but soft and leathery. We thought both dreadfully nasty for a day or two; then we could just endure them; then we came to like them; and before we left the country we wondered how we should do without them. CHAPTER III. CITY OF MEXICO. [Illustration: VIEW OF PART OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.] Some thirty years ago, Don Agustín Yturbide, the first and last Emperor of Mexico, found that he wanted a palace wherein to house his newly-fledged dignity; and began to build one accordingly, in the high street of Mexico, close to the great convent of San Francisco. It could not have been nearly finished when its founder was shot: and it became the _Hotel d’Yturbide_. We are now settled in it, in very comfortable quarters. There is a restaurant down below, where the son of the late Yturbide dines daily, and everybody points him out to us, and moralises over him. Mr. Christy’s drawer-roll of letters of introduction has produced an immediate crop of pleasant acquaintances, whose hospitality is boundless. We are not idle, far from it; and a long day’s work is generally followed by a social dinner, and an evening spent in noting down the results of our investigations.