This broken district was succeeded by a genuine desert, covered with fine dust, which rose, as we rode, in suffocating clouds.
Here the valley began to close in upon us and its slopes were sprinkled with great cushion cactuses in strange and grotesque forms.

After this desert gorge, we came out into a more open and more fertile district extending to Tehuacan.

Even this, however, was dry and sunburned.
Our party numbered four.

We had written and telegraphed to the padre and expected that he, or Ernst, would meet us in Tehuacan.

Neither was there.