This aroused my curiosity, and with some little urging he told us the story. “This tobacco,” said Dunton, “comes from the town of Carcinto, quite a mining settlement of _adobe_ houses and stockades, surrounding a Mexican convict station in the center of the state of Chihuahua. It is made by the convicts, who treat the ordinary tobacco with the juice of a native plant, which gives it the pungent flavor you notice and, I suspect, a slight narcotic power; be that as it may, now that I am used to it, other tobacco is flat and tasteless. I was down there some years ago, trying to sell the mine-owners some carts, harness, and things in my line, and I became well acquainted with the nature of these convicts, and I tell you, I would rather take my chances in a den of mountain lions than among those fellows when they revolt. At such times they are madly insane, and nothing is too hellish for them. “I had made a good thing of my deal and was anxiously waiting for an escort,--for I had four thousand Mexican dollars, and a man of my shape takes no chances in toting money around in that country. “The day that I remember particularly--and you will see I have reason to--was the day before I was to go out from the mine with the mule train. That afternoon I went in the levels with Senor Bustino, one of the owners, a gentleman, every inch of him--and I tell you, no finer gentleman walks the earth than a high-caste Mexican of Castilian blood. “I had sold them a few dozen American pickaxes, and one of the convict gangs was to try them that day for the first time. It was the first lot of pickaxes ever used in that mine, and, as the sequel proved, the last. The men were doing with them twice the business they had formerly done with their clumsy heavy hoes. Two soldiers with _escopetas_ were on guard, and two overseers with pistols and heavy canes were directing the work. To get a better and nearer view, Sefior Bustino and I crowded through until we came to the rotten ledge filled with the silver, upon which they worked. The convicts stopped and gazed upon us curiously, some of them pushing back their long black hair out of their eyes and staring with undisguised wonder at me, for I was a _gringo_, a _heretico_, and a strange object to them in those early days, with my paler skin and peculiar dress. Near me was a large black fellow, bare to the waist.. He was short-necked and broad-shouldered, and his cheeks were so high as to partly close his little fierce eyes; his nose was low and flat, while his chin was sharp and prominent, with a deep scowl; in fact, a bundle of animal appetites and passions done up in a hideous form. As we passed he drew from the folds of his drawers--the only clothing he wore--a pinch of tobacco and a com husk, and making a cigarette he stepped to one of the grease-wood torches and lighted it, blowing out a great cloud of pungent, aromatic smoke from his broad nostrils, that filled the space around us with the odor you noticed from