My companion refused for a time to award the premium of badness to our thoroughfare; but, just while we were discussing the question and recounting our experience of bone-smashing highways, we reached a pass where the road consisted of a series of steps, nearly a foot in depth, down which steps we went at a swinging trot, holding on for our lives, in terror lest the next jerk should fairly wrench our arms out of their sockets, while we could plainly hear the inside passengers howling for mercy, as they were shot up against the roof which knocked them back into their seats.

Aching all over, we reached level ground again, and Mr.Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision which later experiences only served to confirm.
Our start, every time we changed horses, was a sight to see.

Nine half-broken horses and mules, in a furious state of excitement, were harnessed to our unwieldy machine; the helpers let go, and off they went, kicking, plunging, rearing, biting, and screaming, into ruts and watercourses that were like the trenches they make for gas-pipes in London streets, with our wheels on one side on a stone wall, and in a pit on the other, and Black Sam leaning back with his feet on the board, waiting with perfect tranquillity until the animals had got rid of their superfluous energy and he could hold them in.

We were always just going to have some frightful accident, and always just missed it.
The last stage before we reached Otumba, a small dusky urchin ran across the road just before us.

How Black Sam contrived to pull up I cannot tell, though, indeed, his arms were about the size of an ordinary man's thighs; but he did, and they got the child out from the horses' feet quite unhurt.
It was at the inn where we stopped to breakfast that we made our first acquaintance with the great Mexican institutions--tortillas and pulque.
The pulque was being brewed on a large scale in an adjoining building.
The vats were made of cow-skins (with the hair inside), supported by a frame of sticks; and in them was pulque in every stage, beginning with the sweet aguamiel--honeywater--the fresh juice of the aloe, and then the same in different degrees of fermentation till we come to the _madre pulque_, the mother pulque, a little of which is used like yeast, to start the fermentation, and which has a combined odour of gas-works and drains.