Then we returned to the hacienda to say good-bye to our friends there, before starting on our journey back to Mexico.

All the population were hard at work amusing themselves, and the shop was doing a roaring trade in glasses of aguardiente.

The Indian who had been our guide for some days past had opened a Monte bank with the dollars we had given him, and was sitting on the ground solemnly dealing cards one by one from the bottom of a dirty pack, a crowd of gamblers standing or sitting in a semicircle before him, silently watching the cards and keeping a vigilant eye upon their stakes which lay on the ground before the banker.

Other parties were busy at the same game in other parts of the open space before the shop, which served as the great square for the colony.
Under the arcades in front of the shop a fandango was going on, though it was quite early in the afternoon.

A man and a woman stood facing each other, an old man tinkled a guitar, producing a strange, endless, monotonous tune, and the two dancers stamped with their feet, and moved their arms and bodies about in time to the music, throwing themselves into affected and voluptuous attitudes which evidently met with the approval of the bystanders, though to us, who did not see with Indian eyes, they seemed anything but beautiful.