The new house which Don Manuel has built at Tacubaya is decidedly the finest palace in the republic. The position is well chosen, and the sum of $300,000 has been laid out upon the house and grounds. It is a combination of an Italian villa, with the comforts and conveniences of English life. London, Paris, and New York have alike contributed to its furniture. I was told that $50,000 was invested in pictures alone. When I looked at the perfection to which the house, the grounds, and the ornamental works had been carried, my only wonder was that $300,000 could have paid for such a combination of elegance and good taste. The family, which consists only of Don Manuel and his widowed sisters, had left on account of the cholera then prevailing in Tacubaya, but the steward readily opened every door to my companion; and thus, without intruding upon the privacy of a family, or even having the honor of their acquaintance, I obtained access to one of the finest private residences that I have ever yet seen, either in this country or any other. In this house it was that the Gadsden treaty was proposed, at a dinner-party at which Mr. Gadsden and Santa Anna were present. THE DESIERTO. There was nothing to detain me longer at Tacubaya; but a ride upon the Tacubaya road is not well finished without being extended to the _Desierto_, a place now as attractive in its ruins as it was in its prosperity. A description of what it once was I copy from old Thomas Gage: "But more north [south] westward, three leagues from Mexico, is the pleasantest place of all that are about Mexico, called the _Solidad_, or _Desierto_, 'the Solitary Place' or 'Wilderness.' Were all wildernesses like it, to live in a wilderness would be better than to live in a city. This hath been a device of bare-footed Carmelites, to make show of their apparent godliness, and who would be thought to live like hermits, retired from the world, that they may draw the world unto them. They have built them a stately cloister, which, being upon a hill and among rocks, makes it to be most admired. About the cloister they have fashioned out many holes and caves, in, under, and among the rocks, like hermits' lodgings, with a room to lie in, and an oratory to pray in, with pictures, and images, and rare devices for self-mortification, as scourges of wire, rods of iron, haircloth girdles with sharp wire points, to gird about their bare flesh, and many such like toys, which hang about their oratories, to make people admire their mortified and holy lives.