King of Spain gave a part of Oaxaca to Cortez as a reward, and thereafter he was known as the Marquis of the Valley. Benito Juárez was born in a grubby little village high in its hills, and Porfirio Diaz first saw the light in the city itself. Decidedly Oaxaca (pronounced Wah-hah-cah) is worth seeing.

Our visit really began at Puebla. When we reached this fine old town, the

third largest in Mexico and perhaps the most beautiful, we found most of the hotels filled to the roof.

The bandits were raiding some of the outlying districts and the people were coming in for safety. There was talk of a fresh revolution and soldiers and politicians had swarmed in to the city. It is a fact that in most countries street-fighting in moderation seems to attract crowds rather than to drive them away. The pacific citizens seem to regard these affairs as spectacles to be patronized at discretion.

BETWEEN BATTLES IN PUEBLA CITY

As the horses which drew our little, half-roofed carriage clinked over the cobbles, we saw soldiers marching in squads or standing guard in front of house doors. Our driver confided in a hoarse whisper that the previous night the rebels had mounted to the roof of the cathedral and fired down into the fine old Plaza de la Constitución, in which 500 of General Scott's men under Colonel Childs held Santa Anna's army of 2,500 at bay in 1847.

"In the morning," he said, in a fine, throaty murmur, "one sees in the doorways the bodies of those who were shot during the night."

We walked out that evening, hoping to see a midnight murder or at the very least a skirmish with the revolutionists. Nothing happened.

The little street cars, engined by Henry Ford instead of by the accustomed Mexican mule, went clattering about their business. The tall palms of the plaza feathered against the silver disk of the moon. The restaurants which front the cathedral were being emptied, and their gossiping patrons gathered under the

archways to look at belated women hurrying home. We returned to the hotel.

"If the señor would pay now," hinted the proprietor, delicately veiling a yawn. "One must sleep. For nights past the accursed revolucionistas".

hotel bill in advance; but there seemed to be no escape. Our names were marked up on the blackboard, which takes the

One is not accustomed to pay one's

place of a hotel register in Mexico, with our nationalities and occupations. All the other patrons had paid and their bills had been receipted on the board, even to one of the guests who gave as his occupation a general of the Mexican army, and had taken their keys from the hooks.

HOTEL KEEPING IN PUEBLA UNDER
DIFFICULTIES

We suggested that we would like an early morning call, a porter for the baggage, and plenty of coffee and hot rolls. The proprietor replied:

"There is no one to call you; I do not get up so early and the porter is a dog who cannot be trusted. There will be no coffee and the running water has been cut off by the villainous revolucionistas. There will be no carriage to the railway station. There may be no train. One never can tell."

Having reached this perfect understanding, we went to bed. Our own alarm clock wakened us the next morning and we stumbled down winding stairs. with our bags on our shoulders, to find the great doors of the hotel locked and barred.

An automobile was parked away from thieves inside the entrance arch, and, half hidden by it, two barefooted soldiers, blanket-wrapped, their beady eyes glistening under soiled cotton caps, sat propped against the halves of the door, rifles hugged to their breasts.

They seemed to look on us with suspicion, but the usual happened. We smiled, after a time they smiled, and all was well. In the wind-swept street stood a waiting. carriage, the driver asleep on the box, the little horses nodding over the yoke.

At the railway station the gray morning light was beginning to filter in between the heavy stone pillars upon the

throng of straw-hatted peons, Indian women carrying burdens on their heads, and sleepy, tired soldiers.

At the door was a coffee stand presided over by a gloriously clean Indian woman. The glasses in which she served coffeea mixture of hot milk and cold coffee extract, which was kept in bottles-fairly shone, and she offered the almost forgotten luxury of napkins. Her helper sat on the stone floor by her side, fanning the charcoal in a little brazier.

"Where is the lettuce?" asked the pretty girl of Jim.

She moved through that crowd of kindly, unclean, good-natured, half-bare Indians like a vision from another world.

In point of fact she was precisely that. Imagine an unmistakable American girl, dressed something like the Rue de la Paix, set against this background of soldiers and Indians in the half light of dawn.

Jim tagged after her, dressed in a nobby belted coat and fancy leather shoes, the leading strings of half a dozen Pekingese dogs run through his fingers, and heaped with packages of nightmare outline. Jim said he had the lettuce. There was more than an undertone of acid in his reply.

The gates were opened and we fought our way to seats in the dusty first-class coach of the little railroad that runs to Oaxaca. Across the aisle were the pretty girl and Jim.