agreement, and the heroes who had gained a classical name in the Florida war quitted Chihuahua with extreme indignation, declaring that they had not found a single gentleman among all the members of the government. At length, the alliance was formed with the Comanches, and for a time appeared quite successful, as every death on either side was so much gained; but this pretty plot the Indians spoiled, as we have already stated.

Our author had a favourable opportunity of visiting the interior of the state through an offer made him by a merchant, who asked him to accompany him on a money-collecting expedition. Possibly the invitation was not perfectly disinterested, for a most dangerous country had to be traversed, and a bold companion was very desirable. There were plenty of banditti about, besides the perils from Indians, but M. Fröbel did not allow these to daunt his inclination. They travelled in a coach drawn by two excellent horses, Don Guillermo driving, and our author seated by his side holding a gun ready cocked. They were preceded by Dominguez as outrider, and had a formidable arsenal of two-and-thirty shots between them. Dominguez, however, was a host in himself: he was thoroughly acquainted with all the tricks of the Indians, and was more than a match for them. The savages murdered his father and brother, but he was so fortunate as to gain the favour of the chief Gomez, the most daring ruffian known at that time in Northern Mexico. Gomez grew so fond of the boy that he at length gave him his liberty, and conducted him himself close to the gates of Chihuahua, giving him good advice for his future guidance against the Apaches. "When you are travelling," the old chief said, "avoid the high road; always keep a hundred paces off it, for the Apache conceals himself on the road, and will kill you." On their first night of camping, a herd brought them some pleasant "novedades" from the south of the state. We may observe here, that, in this happy country, the word novedades, or news, is only employed in an unfortunate sense, and principally refers to accidents caused by Indians. Thus, "No tiene usted novedades?" signifies so much as "Has no accident occurred to you?" or, "Are you quite well?" "No hay novedades," is as much as to say, "The road is safe-I have seen no Indians." The special news, then, the herd brought, was that a number of Chihuahuans, on the road to Durango, had been attacked by Comanches, several being killed, and suffering a loss of three thousand dollars. Our author, however, was fortunate enough to escape any interview with the savages, although out in their country for a month. Yet he must have had a narrow escape, as witness the following:

We saw in the distance the stately buildings of the Haçienda de los Charcos, property of Don Estanislao Porros. He was employed at this time in building, at the upper end of the Canada, a large fortified house to shelter travellers against the savages. The building was nearly finished as we rode past. A month later, however, when we had returned safe and sound to Chihuahua, a band of Apaches occupied the house during the night, attacked from it a passing caravan, and murdered from twelve to fifteen persons.

Among other curious anecdotes our author heard about the Indians, was one relating to an Apache chief who had received a decent education in the house of a clergyman in Sonora State. When he set up on his own account as a robber, he employed his ability to read and write as

well as any civilised highwayman could have done. He stopped the mails coming from the mines, obtained all the necessary information from the letters as to transport of silver and goods, and did altogether a most thriving business. At length he fell with his band into an ambuscade of Mexican soldiers, and they were utterly exterminated. This Indian lived with a Mexican girl, whom he had stolen from her father's house. She played her part in the fight against the soldiers like a thorough Indian woman. Her countrymen cried to her that they knew her, and that she had nothing to fear if she surrendered. She spurned the offer, however, and fell with the last of the band, after killing several of the soldiers with her arrows.

Among the many curious customs still kept up in Mexico is one which seems derived from the old Roman law. Whenever a debtor is unable to meet the first claims of his creditor, he is compelled to become his slave. An instance of this occurred within M. Fröbel's knowledge, and as it throws a strange light on Mexican manners and customs, we will make an excerpt:

66

A respectable man in Temósachie had bought goods from time to time of Don Guillermo in Chihuahua. The latter had given him credit for some hundred dollars, and had always been punctually paid. The nan died, and the son came to town with a letter apparently written by the dying father, in which the trader was asked to bestow the same favour on the son. Don Guillermo willingly acceded. The young man took up several hundred dollars' worth of goods. Three years elapsed without payment, and the don now thought of looking him up. Natividad," said Don Guillermo, "as you did not come to me, I must come to you. Why have you not been to Chihuahua lately?" Sir, I was unable to pay your honour." "Can you pay me now ?" "No; I am poor: I have nothing.' "Then you must come with me and work for me." "I am ready: I believe your honour's demand is just." "Then get ready, for I have no time to spare." "I am ready: I wear all I possess on my body." This all consisted of an old straw hat, a coarse cotton shirt, a pair of wide trousers of unbleached linen, sandals, and a gay but ragged serape, with which even the poorest Mexican theatrically drapes his rags. During the whole of this conversation, which decided the fate of several human beings, we had not dismounted, nor the old mother uttered a word. She now burst into tears, and turned to the don. "Your honour is in the right, but how wretched I am in my old days. He is my only child. But I have long foreseen he would not console my last years. He did not follow the example of his father. But will not the caballeros dismount and enter my lowly hut ?" she added, with that courtesy which even the lowest man of Spanish descent never forgets. "Yes," said Don Guillermo, as we entered the hut, "his father was a respectable man. How has his son got into such a wretched condition ?" "Oh, sir, he gambled away his whole fortune." "Had it not been for his father's letter, I should not have given him credit. How could he recommend a son whose bad character he must have known?" Ah, sir, my husband did not write the letter: the boy forged it by the advice of bad comrades." "Then you deserve to be punished," said the don, turning to the young man; "and you, señora," he added, to the old woman, can console yourself. In his present state the boy can be of no comfort to you. I will take charge of him. I will teach him to work and live like a respectable man, and I trust he will return to you hereafter to be a credit to you. You will follow me to Texas," he said, turning again to the son. "Wherever your honour pleases," the latter said; and after a short stay, during which the old woman regaled us with "tortillas" and "frijoles," while Natividad was taking leave of his wife and kissing his child, we left the village and commenced our return. It is curious that the whole affair, which did not occupy half an hour, was settled without the intervention of any public authority.

66

On the road the travellers picked up another debtor, who, although he had been a robber during his career, evinced not the slightest hesitation to obey Don Guillermo's requisition. The two men were compelled to run at full speed after the carriage, but they had no alternative, unless they preferred being scalped by the Apaches. At Cerro Pietro the travellers put up at the house of a robber chief, and Don Guillermo would have liked to carry him off as a Peon too, for he was deep in his books. But great personages cannot be treated like the commonalty, for the man, besides standing at the head of a powerful band, was one of the most respected gentlemen in the town. He received Don Guillermo with excessive politeness, and business was settled with an infinity of courteous phrases. Not a word was said, however, about payment on account, for even if the gentleman had paid up, the travellers would, in all probability, have been stopped on the road and made to refund. On the return to Chihuahua, a sudden alarm of Indians set the little party in commotion, and arms were hurriedly given to the Peons. Strange to say, they made no attempt to assert their liberty, but willingly followed their new master to a life of slavery.

On returning to Chihuahua, M. Fröbel remained the winter, and had an opportunity of seeing a Mexican revolution. The garrison "pronounced" and deposed the government, and our author found himself once more in the very thick of that commotion which had secured to him a necessity of existence at home. The result of his investigations was that continental nations might take a profitable example by the Mexicans as to the way a revolution should be conducted. We should remember, however, that practice makes perfect, and hence ought to feel no surprise that the Chihuahuans deposed their government with the utmost politeness. By the time Germany has gone through an equal number of revotionary phases, she will evince none of those excesses which M. Fröbel appears, honestly enough, we believe, to regret. The chief benefit our author derived from the émeute was that it procured him employment as head of the commissariat and field-train departments of the revolutionary army, the new general having hired from Messrs. Mayer and Co. ten of the largest waggons, with the necessary adjuncts, for the sum of three thousand dollars. At the head of these M. Fröbel set out for El Paso

once more.

Our expeditionary force consisted of five hundred infantry, fifty-five cavalry, and six to eight guns. The greater part of the soldiers were well accoutred, and looked very creditable; but a smaller number, of rather equivocal character, might more easily have been taken for a gang of gipsies than for a portion of a state's military force. These fellows, with a numerous band of women and children, who always follow a Mexican army, gave a strange and most grotesque character to our marches and encampments. Here, one of these bright boys, whose entire uniform consisted of a shirt and an old straw hat-another who had wrapped his naked body in a striped blanket, while wearing on his head a quite regulation shako-a third who had only a pair of trousers on, but who seemed burdened even by this slight costume, for he had tucked up one leg to the knee-there a woman with one child on her arm and leading another, continuing the long day or night march under this burden without a murmur-another who had carried for many miles from the last watering-place two gourds full of water. In spite of her fatigue, she was ever ready to offer the thirsty men a part of her supply. The devotion and perseverance of these women is

admirable, for only the desire of being near their husbands, and waiting upon them, could induce them to form the desperate resolve of enduring a march, on the first morning of which several men fell dead from sun-strokes. In spite of all the fatigues of the march, our camp was always the scene of the cheeriest humour. Three bands tried to keep up our spirits from time to time. The cooking, eating, and drinking went on amidst gossip, laughter, and jests. The conversation of the Mexican populace is witty enough, and relates to subjects we should hardly expect. One of our waggoners, a native of new Mexico, carried on a lengthened conversation with a Chihuahuan about the respective merits of their countrymen. "In New Mexico," I heard him say, "the people make good verses, and you cannot do that." Yes," the Chihuahuan replied, "our people are not so poetical, but they have a greater knowledge of the world." I should like to know on what German road waggoners carry on such a conversation? One day, while walking about camp, I saw a soldier reading a book about the French Revolution. When I went up to him, he began talking about this subject, and diverged from it to the state of Mexico, which he regarded in a gloomy light.

Before the convoy reached El Paso, a courier arrived to inform them that Santa Ana had been appointed president, and approved of the march. Great festivities were instituted, but M. Fröbel appears doubtful whether they were sincere. During the entire march the Indians displayed their natural impudence by surrounding the camp each night and setting fire to the prairie, at considerable risk of blowing up the ammunition waggons. At the Hacienda Encinillas our author saw a flock of six thousand sheep defended by two six-pounder guns, which moved along the plain on either side of them. A few weeks later, on his return to El Paso, he found the entire place covered by dead or dying sheep. The two guns were left unprotected, for the Apaches had attacked the shepherds, driven off the escort, carried away a large number of sheep to the mountains, and lanced several hundred on the spot,- —an amusement of which they are very fond. After completing his arrangements with the Messrs. Mayer, our author returned to New York for a while, whence he proceeded eventually with another waggon train to Texas. As we, however, visited that country so recently in the agreeable company of the Abbé Domenech, this portion of M. Fröbel's work need not detain us. The fact that he has returned to Germany appears sufficient proof that he is in a fair way of recovery from the socialistic tendencies which forced him to quit his fatherland in the first instance.

A DREAM OF NAXOS.

BY MARY C. F. MONCK.

THE sun went down upon the Grecian sea,
And on the fair and lovely Cyclades,
Quenching his fiery arrows in the waves-

The blue, smooth-swelling, foam-belled summer waves-
That broke in music on the yellow sands.

A charmed heaven was o'er me, and around

Lay scenes which well might tempt to the belief
Held by the ancient poets, that their gods
Had oft forsaken the august delights

Of high Olympus for the odorous shades
And verdant meads of Naxos.

Snow-white flocks

Fed on the rich soft herbage of the vales,

Where wandering streams, so free from aught impure
That one might count the white and purple shells
And tinted pebbles of their shallow beds,

Now mirrored back the changes of the sky,

And now in pools more deep and dark, yet clear,
Beneath the dark-leaved, fair-flowered myrtle boughs,
Formed baths, where in the haunted days of old
The heated nymphs had laved their beauteous forms,
Fearless that gaze of Satyr or of Faun

Could pierce the screen of bell, and bud, and leaf.
The soft air bathed my brow with cooling balm
Of aromatic blossoms, for the hills

That met the shore were overgrown with thyme
And scented heath, whence the great golden bees,
Which built their nests in hollows of the rocks,
Sucked such rich fragrant juices as might shame
The boasted limpid honey of the mounts

Of Hybla and Hymettus.

From the woods,

Where the pomegranate ripened in the sun,

And groves of orange and of lemon bent

With fruit, that through the glossy dark-green leaves

Gleamed like red orbs of gold, came murmurings

Of happy wingéd creatures; and the elms

Were crowned with such long wreaths of clustered grapes

And graceful leaves, as the close twining vines

Clad their rough arms with beauty, that I thought

The curls of Bacchus never wore a crown

Would lend them more of grace.

Along the heights
The pale-hued olives waved, and giant figs
Mellowed to ripeness, and great mulberries,
With thousand other of her richest gifts,
The earth bestowed upon this favoured isle.
And as I lay beneath the drooping vines,
The hum of insects, and the low sweet moan
Of the bright ocean, lulled me into rest.
But with such gentle pace did sleep come on,
So gradual was the drawing of the veil
Between my senses and the outer world,
I felt not where thought faded into dreams.