Riding through the long town, we drew up before the house of the _jefe de policia_ (chief of police), and summoned the village officials.

On their appearance we found that all but the _jefe_ himself, were drunk, the _secretario_ in particular being almost useless.

When we handed him the letter from the _prefecto_ he was quite unable to make aught of its grandiloquence.

Having looked it through in a dazed way, he declared that we were "gringos," "like the one who was here last year" (presumably Lumholtz).

With some severity, I told him he did wrong to call visitors to the town by the opprobrious name of _gringos_, and ordered him to read the letter and make known its contents to the _jefe_.