and some to the sea, and some perhaps to needy Mexicans. The inhabitants, on the first appearance of the coming storm, are compelled immediately to tightly bar their doors and windows, stopping up the key-holes, and every other crevice, and to keep them so, long after the Norther ceases to blow, to prevent light articles of their houses from flying away, as also their eyes from being put out by the sand thickly floating in the air.

A French gentleman, Mons. P. Thuillier, described to me the terrible havocs of a Norther, as seen by himself from his own window, in which nine vessels perished, one of which was driven against the walls of the city, whilst another was upset upon the beach, and on the following day, when she was scuttled, six live men, to the joy and surprise of the wreckers, were disembowelled from the schoo ner, which was half filled with water.

CHAPTER III.

Dined with Mr. Dimond. Description of ruins. Isla de los Sacrificios. War-god Huitzilopotchili. The Mexicans believe that the period had arrived for the return of their deity. Cannibal priests. Arrival of Cortes. Montezuma's embassy. Vespus. Marina, Arrest of four Americans and two Dutchmen. Spanish treasure. Consent of Santa Anna to search for money. Arrest of Capt. Place. Four days in Vera Cruz. Departure from Vera Cruz. The Ladrones. Description of them. Duplicity of the Mexicans. Santa Anna's wooden leg.

MR. DIMOND, with whom I dined on Sunday, the first day that I spent in Vera Cruz, was a native of the State of Connecticut; but his lady was a Virginian, which fact I was not apprised of until I had remarked to him, whilst at his house, the striking resemblance I discovered in a portrait likeness that hung in his drawing-room, of Dr. Parker, formerly of Virginia; when the consul informed me, that the old doctor was his father-in-law ;-a most singular coincident. Mr. Dimond, for many years previous to his removal to Vera Cruz, had been the American Consul at Port au Prince, and in his conversation with me unhesitatingly said, that it was his conviction, resulting from his long residence in Hayti, that the slaves of the South, in the United States, were happier, and better provided for, than the blacks of that island, with their boasted freedom. Dinner being over, I accepted his polite invitation to accompany him in a walk to the Passio, which name, as I understood, means a drive or promenade.

The city of Vera Cruz, previous to the revolution, contained about twenty-five thousand inhabitants; but, distressing to tell, it does not now possess more than about four thousand. The general appearance of the town shows great decay and dilapidation; for the many scourges, by war and the decline of commerce, resulting from a system of government policy, which we shall hereafter explain,

has reduced the once flourishing port of Mexico into a heap of ruins, and a by-word for civilized nations.

Upon my reaching the Passio, which is beyond the westward gate of the city, my soul was pained at the ruin and waste that I there beheld. Much of the beauty of the Passio itself yet remained, for a large portion of its pavement, made of smooth and shiny bitumen-its many seats and circles are yet perfect, affording the visiter much recreation, while strolling along its walks, as, at the same time, he feels refreshed by the cooling sea-breeze, which, at the hour of evening, always, most congenially, wafts in gentle zephyrs over it. But how sadly changed the scene since the old Dons of Spain are no longer there to improve and dignify the place. In vain the visiter looks for the flowergardens, and the groves of orange, lemon and cocoa-nut trees, as, also, the pine-apple plant, filling the air with fra. grance, as well as the fountains of water which skirted the Passio on both sides.

This delightful walk once pierced the centre of a broad street, bounded, on either hand, for half a mile, by rows of beautiful buildings-where are they now?-tumbled into ruins; for there can be beheld the broken columns and fallen dome of a proud and lofty church, where once pealed the notes divine of the solemn organ. Indeed, ruin and decay may be seen in all,-in whatever direction the eyes may be turned, literally are beheld, "walls bowed, and crushed seats." How impressively does the scene of this place remind the looker-on of the vanity and futility of all human things; and how melancholy the reflection to him who can stand on the spot and meditatively contemplate over the falling dwellings and palaces; where once the Spanish belle, with her tuned guitar, sweetly warbled her touching notes in the ears of her lover;-falling into heaps of mouldering rubbish,

"The crush'd relics of their vanquished might,"

a retreat and shelter for sheep and swine; or else, made places for the butchering and the drying of meat. I am persuaded, from what I have learned of the history of Mexico, and all I have seen of Vera Cruz, that no greater calamity could have befallen any people, than the acquisition, by the Mexicans, of their independence, and the expulsion of the old Spaniards from her dominions.

At the end of the Passio my attention was attracted by the sound of music, and, on approaching a falling building, which yet had standing a portion of its portal, supported by pillars, was seen a motley crowd; one of the men, a Mexican, was strumming on an indifferent Spanish guitar, while a negro was also thumbing a kind of harpsichord peculiar to the country. As the music was going on, a woman and a man were dancing, what I was informed to be a fandango. The woman wore the hat of her partner, and the dance consisted in a lazy shuffle to a slow tune. At a period of every five or ten minutes, the woman would commence a plaintive ditty, in which the whole crowd would join in chorus, and, what would otherwise have rendered the music agreeable, was, that the male voices attempted to imitate the female, and produced such a shrill, hideous sound, the like of which, for music, I had never before heard more ridiculous. Upon my inquiring the reason of the lady's wearing the hat of the gentleman, I was informed that whenever an individual desired to dance with a lady, he would first present her with his hat, and, if she thus accepted his invitation, he could not again obtain his hat without redeeming it by paying one dollar; and in this way, I was told, the loafers of Vera Cruz devoted every Sabbath evening.

Upon continuing my walk further on the green turf of the level plain, a small building, with a belfry, and a high wall, encircling a large plat of ground, all of an antique and decayed appearance, struck my view. This was the cemetery, whose ready portals were continually receiving

so large a portion of the human family. About midway between myself and the cemetery, I discovered the habit of a priest, and about him were some six or eight individuals, and I was informed, that at that place the priests were in the custom of meeting the corpse brought out of the city for interment, as to go too often into the cemetery was considered to expose too much the life of the holy father, and therefore there performed the last solemn duties of ablution, and of sprinkling dust and ashes over the remains of a departed fellow-being returning to his mother earth.

My mind, dissatisfied with all the objects presented to my view, my thoughts could but revert, with the Isla de los Sacrificios in broad aspect of the Passio, to the early history of the country. In 1518, Grijalva had the distinguished fame of being the first European who set foot on Mexican soil, and, at the island above mentioned it was, where the Spaniard first beheld the trickling blood of human hecatombs on the altars of the Mexican war-god Huitzilopotchili, and from the ensanguined temples erected for his worship, perpetually ascended the smoke of human sacrifices in every town of the empire. How vast, then, the destruction of human life! In the mystic legends of the Mexicans, as to one of their tutelary deities, the god of the air, Quetzalcoatl, prepared the way by which, alone, a handful of Spaniards were enabled to overthrow a vast and powerful empire. This air god, doomed to exile by a superior divinity, was tall in stature, with a white skin, long dark hair, and a flowing beard. Seated in his wizzard skiff, made of serpents' skins, he embarked upon the Mexican gulf, to glide over the great waters of the fabled land of Hapallaw. But, previous to his departure, he promised his friends that himself and his descendants would again visit a country which he so much loved. And divine will did so provide, in the abundance of time, that the fair regions of Mexico should no longer be doomed to the loathsome and degrading practices of cannibalism, to satiate the bloody and depraved