CHAPTER IV.
TACUBAYA.PACHUCA.REAL DEL MONTE.
We went one morning to the house of our friend Don Pepe, and were informed by the servant as we entered the courtyard that the nino, the child, was up stairs waiting for us.

"The Child" seemed an odd term to apply to a young man of five and twenty.

The young ladies, in the same way are called the ni-as, and keep the appellation until they marry.
We went off with the nino to his uncle's house at Tacubaya, on the rising ground above Mexico.

In the garden there we found a vegetation such as one would find in southern Europe--figs, olives, peaches, roses, and many other European trees and flowers--growing luxuriantly, but among them the passion-flower, which produces one of the most delicious of fruits, the granadita, and other semi-tropical plants.

The live creatures in the garden, however, were anything but European in their character.