Signs of volcanic action are abundant.

To say nothing of the two great mountains we have just left behind, there is a hill of red volcanic tufa just beyond us; and still further on, though this is anticipating, our road passes over the lava-field at the foot of the little volcano of Santa Barbara.
There is a population here at any rate, village after village; and between them are great plantations of maize and aloes; for this is the district where the best pulque in Mexico is made, the "llanos de Apam." It is the _Agave Americana_, the same aloe that is so common in southern Europe, where indeed it flowers, and that grows in our gardens and used to have the reputation of flowering once in a hundred years.

I do not exaggerate when I say that we saw hundreds of thousands of them that day, planted in long regular lines.

Among them were walking the Indian "tlachiqueros," each with his pigskin on his back, and his long calabash in his hand, milking such plants as were in season.
[Illustration: INDIAN TLACHIQUERO, COLLECTING JUICE OF THE AGAVE FOR PULQUE.] The fine buildings of the haciendas, and more especially the churches, contrast strongly with the generality of houses, all of one story, built of adobes (mud-bricks dried in the sun), with flat roofs of sand and lime resting on wooden rafters, and the naked ground for a floor, all dark, dirty, and comfortless.

There are even many huts built entirely of the universal aloe.