The heat had become so oppressive that we took off our coats; and Mr.Christy, riding in his shirt-sleeves and holding a white umbrella over his head, which he had further protected with a turban, declared that even in the East he had not had so fatiguing a ride.

We passed through Soquital, and there the natives were idling and drinking spirits as before, and seemed hardly to have moved since we left.

This plateau of Atotonilco el Grande, called for shortness Grande, is, like most of the high plains of Mexico, composed mostly of porphyry and obsidian, a valley filled up with debris from the surrounding mountains, which are all volcanic, embedded in reddish earth.

The mountain-torrents--in which the water, so to speak, comes down all at once, not flowing in a steady stream all the year round as in England--have left evidences of their immense power in the ravines with which the sides of the hills, from their very tops downward, are fluted.
These fluted mountain-ridges resemble the "Kamms" (combs) of the Swiss Alps, called so from their toothed appearance.
We had met numbers of Indians, bringing their wares to the Sunday market in the great square of Atotonilco el Grande; and when we reached the town on our way home, business was still going on briskly; so we put up our horses, and spent an hour or two in studying the people and the commodities they dealt in.

It was a real old-fashioned Indian market, very much such as the Spaniards found when they first penetrated into the country.