FOOTNOTE:
[43] Since the time of the Spaniards, these turrets or almenas denoted the house of a nobleman.
CHAPTER III.
Departure of the Convoy.—Victoriano, the Muleteer.—His sudden Disappearance.—The Convoy is attacked by Robbers.
I purposed leaving Mexico now that order appeared established and commerce had returned to its wonted channels. I learned that the conducta was already in motion. I still held by my purpose of making part of the escort under the command of the Lieutenant Don Blas; and on the morning after a day spent in taking leave of my friends, I traversed the streets of Mexico for the last time, attended by my valet Cecilio.
Upon reaching the open country, the joy that had taken possession of me at the idea of my speedy return to Europe was slightly tinged by a vague feeling of sadness. Mexico is still surrounded with lakes as in the time of the Conquest; but the appearance of these still waters, traversed by a magnificent road, has been completely changed. The time is gone by when they bore on their bosom the brigantines of Cortez and the pirogues of the ancient inhabitants. Partly lessened by evaporation and partly by drainage, the lakes of Mexico preserve nothing of their former splendor. The distant report of some sportsman's gun, and the wild songs of the Indians, whose pirogues may sometimes be seen making their way through the bending reeds, at rare intervals break the mournful silence which broods over the fields in their vicinity. Some white aigrets—sitting motionless on the surface of the water—white as the flowers of the water-lily, a few water-hens, wild ducks, and huge reptiles which shake the aquatic plants as they pass, and here and there an Indian angler standing up to the middle of his legs in water, are the only living beings to be seen in these solitudes. The heavens and the mountains are alone unchanged; and the same volcanoes, their tops covered with eternal snow, still shoot up aloft into the air as they did three hundred years before.
Having arrived at Buena Vista, which commands a view of the whole valley of Mexico, I stopped to take a last look of the beautiful plain at my feet. In the midst of a belt of blue hills and small villages, whose white houses contrasted beautifully with the green of the willows, the lakes assumed, owing to the distance, something of their ancient glory. Mexico seemed still the city of the New World. I stopped for a moment to contemplate the distant domes with a feeling of involuntary dejection. I looked for the last time upon a city to which I had come with all the curiosity and enthusiasm peculiar to youth. Mexico was my halting-place when I returned from my excursions in the country round. It was like a second country to me; for, if infancy has its souvenirs dear to that state of childhood, youth can not forget the place where the flower of adolescence has shot up, and withered, alas! too soon. I looked again at this fertile valley, where smiles an eternal spring; and, to escape from the sadness which possessed me, put my horse to the gallop, and the lofty towers of that city which I was never more to behold were soon quickly lost to my view.
After passing a night at the venta of Cordova, my road lay through the woods of Rio Trio, so notorious for the robberies committed there in broad daylight, and the smiling plains of San Martin, which strongly remind one of those of the Bajio. The snowy peaks of the volcanoes in the vicinity of Mexico were lighted up by the last rays of a sun that sparkled like an expiring beacon-fire when I rode into Puebla. The conducta had passed through that town the same evening. Puebla, the lofty towers of its convents, churches, and cupolas all covered with enameled tiling, looks at a distance like an Oriental town overtopped with minarets. I halted a short time to rest myself, and on the third day after my departure from Mexico descried from a distance the red pennons of the lancers who escorted the convoy.
In the first cavalier to whom I addressed myself after overtaking the escort I could scarcely recognize the asistente of Don Blas. The desires of this worthy lépero on becoming a soldier had been completely satisfied, for, except that he had only a bottine on one foot, a shoe on the other, and no straps to his trowsers, his cavalry uniform left him nothing to desire. In consonance, also, with military discipline, he had parted with his hair.