I emptied the glass and placed it on the table, without again offering them wine, but handed them a light for their cigars, which had gone out. After a while the man asked me whether it was fire-water the bottle contained, and when I replied in the negative, and assured him it was capital wine, he said that one of the girls wished to taste it. I filled the glass, put it to my lips, and handed it to her on the horse: she raised it to her lips rather timidly, but drank the wine off at a draught so soon as she had once tasted it. Her eyes beamed with joy, and as she sat up on her horse, and passed her hand from her neck over her breast and stomach, she said, with an expression of delight, "Bueno," and handed me the glass back with a sign to give her some more. I filled it again, but gave it to her sister, who was looking on silently but eagerly. She, too, liked the wine, and emptied the glass, which I set on the table. At this moment both girls leapt from their horses, gave the bridles to the Indian with a disdainful gesture, while one of them told him imperiously to take the horses to graze; I at least concluded so from the gestures with which she accompanied her words, and from his at once going off with the horses. The speaker then turned to me with a most gracious smile, and, after throwing a contemptuous glance at the man, said to me "Mexicano," and now it became clear to me that he was a slave, probably stolen by this Indian tribe when a boy. The two young savages now ran up to the verandah in front of my house, and I saw for the first time properly what remarkably pretty visitors I had; for both girls had been so crouching on their horses that but little of their figure could be seen. The one who seemed to me the younger, was very tall, slim, and most beautifully formed; her shape was elegant, but round and full, and her bones so delicate, that the comparison between horse and deer involuntarily occurred to me; her hands and feet, like those of all Indians, were very small, and so gracefully shaped that the white colour was not missed. On proportionately broad shoulders and a plump, round neck, she carried her head freely, and her demeanour proved that she was perfectly well satisfied with herself. Her glossy black silky hair hung, fastened together on the left side of her head with a strip of vermilion leather, for a length of four feet over her shoulders, and on the top of the red fillet floated by the side of her head a round bush of countless feathers of the most brilliant colours, which heaved up and down at every movement. Her fine lofty forehead was adorned by sharply-cut, glistening eyebrows, beneath which black eyes flashed; but their wild expression was toned down by the shadow of long eyelashes, and only in moments of excitement did the passionate look return to them. The small, pretty nose turned up slightly at the end, and gave a saucy look to the face, while the laughing, fresh, half-parted mouth, with its full cherry