While at Cusihuiriachic we had looked with some contempt on the primitive accommodations of its forlorn and dilapidated hotel, and had rather scouted the idea of its being possible to find a worse place or greater disregard for the common necessities of life in any habitable town. The little cell-like room, with its wooden bench, tin wash basin, and bare brick floor on which to stow one's bedding, seemed to be the extreme of simplicity; therefore we believed that Carichic could hardly do less for us. But as everything is relative in this world, I was soon to look back to the despised hotel as the last taste of civilization, and to appreciate it accordingly. On reaching Carichic, a town of six or seven hundred people, we were told there was no such thing as a lodging house for us, and that it would be necessary for us to camp in the streets or some field, unless our Mexican friend could induce the village priest to allow us the use of a large empty room in one corner of the big building he occupied. The loaning or renting of a large empty room does not seem to be an act of great hospitality, nevertheless it was so regarded. The Mexican gentleman, when passing backward and forward over the trail between his father's mines and Chihuahua, always made his headquarters with the priest or _cura_, who was a great friend of his family; but everything and everybody from the United States he looked upon with suspicion and distrust. Therefore, considering the circumstances, his readiness to allow us under his roof could only be considered as a marked hospitality, or as evidence of a disposition to oblige our mutual Mexican friend. Perhaps he was animated by a keen sense of duty, and found this a fitting opportunity to mortify the spirit. But, whatever his motive, we were given the use of the room. So the stage left us and our worldly possessions there, for at Carichic all roads ended, and, as soon as I could make my arrangements with a native packer for his pack train of mules, we were to take one of the narrow Indian trails leading back into the heart of the Sierra Madres.