shrinking from an open declaration of independence, Yucatan was widening the breach, and committing an offence which Mexico could never forgive, by an alliance with a people whom that government, or rather Santa Ana, regarded as the worst of rebels, and whom he was bent upon exerting the whole power of the country in an effort to reconquer. Such was the disjointed and false position in which Yucatan stood at the time of our presentation to the governor. Our visit to him was made at his private residence, which was one befitting his station as a private gentleman, and not unworthy of his public character. His reception-room was in the sala or parlour of his house, in the centre of which, after the fashion of Merida, three or four large chairs covered with morocco were placed facing each other. Don Santiago Mendez was about fifty years of age, tall and thin, with a fine intellectual face, and of very gentlemanly appearance and deportment. Free from internal wars, and saved by her geographical position from the sanguinary conflicts common in the other Mexican states, Yucatan has had no school for soldiers; there are no military chieftains and no prepossessions for military glory. Don Santiago Mendez was a merchant, until within a few years, at the head of a respectable commercial house in Campeachy. He was so respected for uprightness and integrity, that in the unsettled state of affairs he was agreed upon by the two opposite parties as the best person in the state to place at the head of the government. His popularity, however, was now somewhat on the wane, and his position was neither easy nor enviable. From a quiet life and occupations, he found himself all at once in the front rank of a wide-spread rebellion. An invasion from Mexico was constantly apprehended, and should it prove successful, while others would escape by reason of their insignificance, his head would be sure to fall. The two great parties, one in favour of keeping open the door of reconciliation with Mexico, and the other for immediate and absolute separation, were both urging him to carry out their views. The governor shrank from the hazard of extremes, was vacillating, undecided, and unequal to the emergency. In the mean time, the enthusiasm which led to the revolution, and which might have achieved independence, was wearing away. Dissatisfaction and discontent prevailed. Both parties blamed the governor, and he did not know himself to which he belonged.