The little watch-houses for guarding the newly-sown fields are a striking feature of the landscape.
In the higher districts they were small, conical or dome-shaped structures, made of the leaves of the _maguey_, and hardly large enough for a man to lie down in.

Lower down, these were replaced by little rectangular huts, only a few feet across, with thatched roofs, the whole construction being raised on poles ten or twelve feet above the ground.
It was scarcely more than noonday when we reached Nochixtlan, where the _jefe_ of the district lives.

Telling him that we desired to visit Yodocono and Tilantongo, he wrote orders for us, and charged some indians of Tidaa to show us the road, so far as they were going.

The country through which we passed was a continuation of that preceding Nochixtlan.

The road was nearly level, with but slight ups and downs, until a little before we reached our destination, when we had an abrupt up-turn to Yodocono, a pretty town on the border of a little lake, which has but recently appeared, and which covers an area which a few years ago was occupied by cultivated fields.