The next night, after dark, I arrived at a little village, and turned into an open caravansary. The old man of the establishment was very kind, and offered me a mat to lie on, but he had no corn for my horse. After making some inquiries that were a little unpleasant for a man who was traveling without a passport to answer, he said he would procure for me some corn from the alcalde. This village magistrate, who, in the absence of the "Judge of First Instance," is _ex officio_ a judge, was an enormous negro, over six feet in height, whose dignity was not certainly dependent upon his official robes, for a single napkin constituted his whole apparel. He sat upon an ox-skin, which did duty for the wool-sack--the very personification of the majesty of the law, with curled wig, and hide as black as the gown of the Lord Chief Justice, with the advantage that both were natural. This was the second negro I had yet seen in the country. The other held a commission as captain in the army, and was in the escort of General Garay. I had a hard day's ride to reach the city of Iguala in time to witness the celebration of the independence, which was proclaimed here in 1821. The celebration, for the most part, consisted in eating and drinking from booths placed around the central square of the town. As I had little time to spare, I hurried on, and soon came to the Puente de Iztla, the carriage-road, that is finished thus far southward from the city of Mexico. I started early next morning upon my journey. During the greater part of the day the road led through a continuous corn-field, and toward evening we came to the pretty Indian village of Alpayuca, so neat and well-ordered that it might have passed for one of the missionary Indian villages of our northern Indians, were it not for the fine old Catholic church, which must have cost in its construction, centuries ago, fifty times the value of the present village, without including the cost of the bronze railing, brought from China in the prosperous days of the Manilla Company. CUARNAVACA.