The resident partner was an Englishman. His connection with the Real del Monte Company extended only to the manufacture of salt. But even this was an extensive affair, and had already absorbed an investment of $100,000, in order to provide the salt used in only one branch of the process of refining silver at that mine. The gentleman was now absent, but his excellent English wife and her brother knew full well how to discharge the duties of host even to an unknown stranger. The dinner was of the best, and there was no lack of appetite after a hard day's ride on a trotting horse. So we all had the prime elements of enjoyment. Entertainment for man and beast is among the highest luxuries to be found by the wayside. It was an equal luxury to my hosts in their isolated residence to receive a visit from one whose only recommendation was that the English language was his native tongue, so that when we retired from the dining-room we had become old acquaintances. REMAINS OF TEZCUCO. The King of Tezcuco never knew what it was, on a raw winter's evening, to sit before a bright wood fire, in a fire-place, with feet on fender and tongs in hand, listening to an animated conversation so mixed up of two languages that it was hard to tell which predominated. Not all the stateliness to be found in Mexican palaces, where, in a lordly tapestried halls, men and women sit and shiver over a protracted dinner, can yield pleasures like those grouped around an English fireside. The evening was not half long enough to say all that was to be discussed. As we sat and chatted, and drank our tea with a gusto we had never known before, we forgot altogether that we were indulging in plebeian enjoyments upon the spot where a king's palace had probably stood. Instead of such plebeian things as a wood floor and Brussels carpet, his half-clad majesty had here squatted upon a mat, and dealt out justice or injustice, according to his caprice, to trembling crowds of dirty Indians, whose royal rags and feathers made them princely. Dignity and majesty are truly parts of Indian character, but a good dinner and a clean bed are luxuries that an Indian, even though he were an emperor, never knew. My business here was to search for relics, and as soon as daylight appeared I was astir. But no relics could be found except some stone images so rudely cut as to be a burlesque upon Indian stone-cutting. There was a sacrificial stone and a calendar stone built into the steps of the church of San Francisco, which were so badly done that the use to which they had been applied could just be made out. Here, too, was a rude stone wall, that had been built over the grave of Don Fernando, the first Christian king of Tezcuco, who had been converted to Christianity by Cortez. There is also here one of those little chapels which Cortez built, which indicate extremely limited means in the builder.