The motley crew of half-drunk officials, miserably dressed, degraded, poor, in this scene of past magnificence, called up thoughts of the contrast between the government of old Mitla and the present,--of past magnificence and modern squalor.
[Illustration: THE CONTRAST; PAST AND PRESENT--MITLA] Having accomplished all we wished at Mitla, we again struck eastward toward the land of the Mixes.

Late in starting, we made no attempt to go further than San Lorenzo that afternoon.

The old road was familiar, and from there on, through the following day, everything came back to memory.

Even individual trees, projecting rock masses, and little streams, were precisely as we remembered them from our journey of three years earlier.

We reached Ayutla in the evening a little before sunset.
Riding directly to the municipal house we summoned the town government.
We had not provided ourselves with orders from the _jefe_ of the district, as Villa Alta, the _jefatura_, lay far out of our course.