The viceroy would have too many irons in the fire to trouble himself about the mission of Quipai and its chief, even if they should come to his knowledge, which was to the last degree improbable.

We sat talking for several hours, and should probably have talked longer had not the abbe kindly yet peremptorily insisted on my retiring to rest.
Early next morning we started on an excursion to the valley lake, each of us mounted on a fine mule from the abbe's stables, and attended by an _arriero_.

North as well as south of San Cristobal (as the village was generally called) the country had the same garden-like aspect.

There was none of the tangled vegetation which in tropical forests impedes the traveller's progress; except where they had been planted by the roadside for protection from the sun, or bent over the water-courses, the trees grew wide apart like trees in a park.

Men and women were busy in the fields and plantations, for the abbe had done even a more wonderful thing than restoring the great _azequia_--converted a tribe of indolent aborigines into an industrious community of husbandmen and craftsmen; among them were carpenters, smiths, masons, weavers, dyers, and cunning workers in silver and gold.