Hot, tired, and overpowered we were plodding homewards, when a letter was handed to a member of the party by a mounted soldier, who, seeing our lights approaching the entrance, had dared to venture into the grottos to deliver his missive. We were all surprised at the man’s arrival, and more surprised to find he carried an envelope. It turned out to be a telegram which had followed our party from a village forty miles distant, and had been sent on by special horseman with instructions to overtake us at all speed. Was ever telegram delivered amid stranger surroundings, to a more cosmopolitan collection of humanity assembled in the bowels of the earth, far, far away from civilisation? What news that telegram contained! It had travelled seven thousand miles across land and sea; it had arrived at a moment when we were all overawed by stupendous grandeur and thoroughly worn out with fatigue. At the first glance it seemed impossible to read. Men, accustomed to the vagaries of foreign telegraph clerks when dealing with the English language, found, however, no difficulty in deciphering its meaning. Then the Governor spoke a word. Every Indian doffed his hat and bent his eyes, as Colonel Alarcon walked solemnly towards me, and in deep tone, with evident feeling, explained that the President of Mexico had sent on the news to tell the English señora— “QUEEN VICTORIA IS DEAD.” A historic telegram, truly, announcing a national calamity, and received amidst the wildest possible surroundings in the strangest possible way. The Queen was dead. The English-speaking people had lost her who had been their figure-head for sixty-three years. The monarch, to whom the whole world paid homage as a woman and respect as a Queen, had died at Osborne on the previous day, while we, wandering over Aztec ruins at Xochicalco, had not even heard of her illness. Impressed as we were by the mystic grandeur of the caves, amazed at the wonders of nature, this solemn news seemed to fit the serious thoughts of the day, thoughts which had grown in intensity with each succeeding hour. Cacahuimilpa appeared a fitting spot in which to hear of a great public loss. Time and place for once were in no wise “out of tune.” It was dark and the way steep as we rode back to the village in silence. Like the proverbial bad penny, I rolled home again with my pocket full of notes on men, women, and things. I had collected my material, written bits in railway trains, on steamboats, and almost in the saddle, and as soon as I felt well enough, put together _Mexico as I saw It_.