This over, we found that we had thrown another family into confusion. The wife and a little daughter of our carrier accompanied him to the top of a hill beyond the village, where they bade him farewell as if he was setting out on a long and dangerous journey. The attachment of the Indian to his home is a striking feature of his character. The affection which grows up between the sexes was supposed by the early writers upon the character of the Indians not to exist among them, and probably the sentiment and refinement of it do not; but circumstances and habit bind together the Indian man and woman as strongly as any known ties. When the Indian grows up to manhood he requires a woman to make him tortillas, and to provide him warm water for his bath at night. He procures one, sometimes by the providence of the master, without much regard to similarity of tastes or parity of age; and though a young man is mated to an old woman, they live comfortably together. If he finds her guilty of any great offence, he brings her up before the master or the alcalde, gets her a whipping and then takes her under his arm and goes quietly home with her. The Indian husband is rarely harsh to his wife, and the devotion of the wife to her husband is always a subject of remark. They share their pleasures as well as their labours; go up together with all their children to some village fiesta, and one of the most afflicting incidents in their lot is a necessity that takes the husband from his home. In the suburbs of the village we commenced ascending the sierra, from the top of which we saw at the foot the hacienda of Santa Maria. Behind it rose a high mound, surrounded by trees indicating that here too were the ruins of an ancient city. Descending the sierra, we rode up to the hacienda, and saw three gentlemen sitting under a shed breakfasting. One of them had on a fur hat, a mark of civilization which we had not seen for a long time; an indication that he was from the city of Tekax, and had merely come out for a morning ride.