I was off at dawn. Hundreds of Indians from the interior had slept in
scattered groups all along the road to town, beside the produce they had
come to sell on market day. For it is against the law to be found out of
doors in Zamora after ten! My compatriot had twice fallen foul of the
vigilant police there and been roundly mulcted--once the bolt of the
hired carriage in which he was riding broke, the conveyance turned
turtle, mashed his foot, and covered his face with blood, and he was
imprisoned and fined for "escandalo." On another occasion he spent some
time in jail because his mozo behind him accidentally knocked over the
lantern of a policeman set in the middle of the street.

But let us leave so straight-laced a spot behind. The rocky "road"
could not hold to the same opinion for a hundred consecutive yards, but
kept changing its mind as often as it caught sight of some new corner of
the landscape. The Indians, who crowded the way during the first hour,
were not friendly, but neither did they show any dangerous propensities,
and never failed in greeting if spoken to first. There were many of them
of pure aboriginal blood. The stony road climbed somewhat to gain
Tangantzicuaro, then stumbled across a flatter country growing more
wooded to Chilota, a large town with a tiny plaza and curious,
overhanging eaves, reminiscent of Japan, stretching down its
checker-board streets in all directions.

The trail, which had gone a mile or more out of its way to visit the
place, no sooner left it than it fell abruptly into the bed of what in
other weather would have been a rocky mountain torrent, and set off with
it in a totally new direction, as if, having fallen in with congenial
company, it had entirely forgotten the errand on which it had first set
forth. The land was fertile, with much corn. In time road and river bed
parted company, though only after several attempts, like old gossips,