_shallow_, home-made chairs, and against the wall a large primitive
sideboard with glistening brown earthen pots and carefully polished
plates and bowls. When I had photographed the interior, la senora asked
if I would take a second picture, and raced away to another hut. She
soon returned with a very small and poor amateur print of two peons in
Sunday dress. One of them was her son, who had been killed by a falling
pine, and the simple creature fancied the magic contrivance I carried
could turn this tiny likeness into a life-size portrait.

Beyond, were more rocks and wooded mountains, with vast seas of Indian
corn stretching to pine-clad cliffs, around the "shores" of which were
dozens of make-shift shacks for the guardians against theft of the
grain. Later I passed an enormous field of maize, which more than a
hundred Indians of both sexes and every age that could stand on its own
legs were harvesting. It was a communal corn-field, of which there are
many in this region. They picked the ears from the dry stalks still
standing and, tossing them into baskets, heaped them up in various parts
of the field and at little temporary shanties a bit above the general
level on the surrounding "coast." As I passed, the gang broke up and
peons in all colors, male, female, and in embryo, went away in all
directions like a scattering flock of birds.

Thus far there had been no suggestion of the reputed dangers of the
road. But trouble is never far off in Mexico, since the failure of its
rapidly changing governments to put down bands of marauders has given
every rascal in the country the notion of being his own master. The sun
was just setting when, among several groups coming and going, I heard
ahead five peons, maudlin with mescal, singing and howling at the top of
their voices. As they drew near, one of them said something to his
companions about "armas." I fancied he was expressing some idle drunken