Two days later Dick and the minister ate luncheon in private with President Diaz; and Dick lost no opportunity to make short excursions to neighboring towns and into the country. He explored the great cathedral, the largest church building on the American continent; he visited the floating gardens, the base of the volcano Popocatapetl, the famous Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadeloupe; he consorted with the pure Indians in the country and walked with the water-carriers as they worked; he delved here and there and everywhere for facts; and no man ever saw more of the Mexican capital in a week than Dick did. But with all the sight-seeing he did not neglect the writing. “A hod-carrier could write good letters with such facts as I have,” he said to himself. “I must get them on paper while they are fresh in my mind.” Night after night he toiled away in his room; and as the letters went home by rail, the early ones were appearing while he was still in the Mexican capital. “I feel as if I ought to call upon Comacho at the Belen,” he said to the minister when the time had nearly come for his stay to end. “He is a cowardly fellow, but it seems unkind to go off without bidding him good-by.” “I will take you there,” the minister replied; “you can go safely with me.” Dick’s work had taken him inside many prisons, but he had never seen anything quite as gloomy and depressing as the interior of the Belen. A guard was sent for Comacho, and he was brought to the stone-paved reception room with manacles on his feet, and coatless, but with a gaudy striped serape or Mexican blanket about his shoulders. There was a beard of many days’ growth upon his face, and altogether he looked wretched and forlorn. He burst into tears, as usual, as soon as he caught sight of Dick. “I have no hope of getting out,” he moaned; “none; I am ill-fed, ill-treated, dirty. I should never have come back to this wretched country.” The scene was too painful to stand long, and Dick cut it as short as possible. He wished the lieutenant a speedy deliverance and bade him good-by; and that was the last he saw of Señor don Manuel de Comacho. “I have been particularly impressed with one thing in Mexico,” he said to the minister after they had left the prison. “It seems to me that the best people in this country are the Aztecs; the Indians, as we call them, for want of a better term. Where they have not been contaminated by associating with the conquering whites, the Spanish, Portuguese, and people of other nations, they are a remarkably fine race--brave, honest, often handsome; altogether superior to the mixed Spanish people, who form the aristocracy here.” “It would hardly do for me to express an opinion on the subject,” the minister replied, “but I think your powers of observation do you great credit.”