A few years ago a bullion train, between here and Tepic, was attacked by bandits and all but one of the guards were killed. He managed to stampede the mules, and get away with the bullion to safety. The Rurales were ordered out, overtook the bandits and arrested them; nearly thirty were shot without trial, on the spot where the attack had been made. Mexican justice, in cases of this kind, or in labour strikes, is very prompt, though to an outsider it may seem rather cruel. In the great strike in the cotton mills in Orizaba a few years ago, the strikers, after some rioting, burned down one of the mills. The Rurales captured the president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer of the local union who had instigated the trouble, and shot them on the site of the burned mill. This seems pretty rough on the leaders, but strike disorders will not be tolerated in this country. If by shooting four of the ringleaders the disorders can be stopped at once it is cheap at the price, considering the loss of life that would ultimately ensue if the disorders were allowed to continue. Look at the number of men killed and crippled for life in the teamsters’ strike in Chicago, or in the street-car men’s strike in San Francisco, and that was in a Saxon country. In a Latin country it would start in a strike and end in revolution. The first year we were here the servants robbed us of nearly everything we possessed, and managed to get away without being caught. On one occasion, however, my wife caught one of the girls trying to sneak out with some of the children’s clothes. She stopped her in time, and, locking the front door, she told the girl she would have to wait till I came home at noon, it then being about 11.30 A.M. A few minutes later I happened to return, and my wife told me of the circumstances. I went to get the girl before I called a policeman, but she was not in the house. All the houses in Guadalajara, and in fact in the greater part of Mexico except in some of the foreign colonies, are built in continuous blocks. The front windows on the streets have iron bars covering them, and they all have double front doors; the outer one of wood and the inner one of steel bars, with a short hallway between them. The garden is in the centre of the house and is called the patio, so there is no outlet except through the front door. The girl, however, had taken a small ladder we had in the house, and with its assistance had got up on the roof of a small wash-house. From here it was nearly seven feet to the roof of the house, a straight wall without footholds, yet she had managed to make this climb taking her bundle of clothes with her, and had gone from roof to roof (they are all flat) till she found a way to get down to the street and to safety.