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Leaving Puebla on the early morning train, and taking the Pachuca branch at Ometusco, we changed cars at Tepa onto the narrow-gauge Hidalgo road for Tulancingo, which took us by a winding course through a great maguéy country. After two hours of riding, in the latter part of which we were within sight of a pretty lakelet, we reached Tulancingo.

From Cuicatlan, we struck north by rail to San Antonio, and, by coach to Teotitlan del Camino and by horse beyond, penetrated to the great Mazatec town of Huauhtla. Chinantecs, Chochos, and Mazatecs are tribes of Oaxaca. Leaving that state, we traveled by rail to Tulancingo.

The Liberals have been beaten at Queretaro, where Miramon took from them twenty-one pieces of artillery and many prisoners, among them an American officer of artillery, whom he shot the next day, AS USUAL. Oajaca has fallen into the hands of the clergy. The Liberals under Carbajal attacked Tulancingo, and were disgracefully beaten by a lot of ragged Indians.

To myself, as leader of the company, he was attentive and ceremonious in the highest degree, and on several occasions he took my companions to task for their ignorance regarding the proper deference to display toward me. He inquired whether we were acquainted with Señor Arroyo, jefe politico of Tulancingo, and then informed us, with pride that that gentleman was his "Señor Padre."

They were accompanied by noisy crowds the several times they made the rounds of the town, keeping up the peculiar trilling, which we had noticed at Tulancingo. At dusk, these maskers dismounted and promenaded in couples about the plaza. Nowhere, as in this region, have we had so much difficulty with regard to animals.

He also told us of the band of Pahuatlan, justly famous, which made so great an impression in one town it visited, that it determined to go to Tulancingo to serenade the jefe of that district, his honored Señor Padre.

But, sir, my Señor Padre said to me, 'son, I am the jefe politico of Tulancingo and the governor of the State is Pedro L. Rodriguez; I am his intimate friend, and we shall succeed in ousting that jefe in Tenango del Doria who has ordered your arrest." He also told us of one time, when his Señor Padre and an inspector visited that unfortunate district as an investigating committee, and found the jefe guilty and put him in jail incomunicado.

We had had such ill success in locating Totonacs so far, that, at our suggestion, they telephoned to the jefe at Tenango inquiring regarding the populations of Huehuetla and Pantepec, with the result that we decided to visit those towns. At Tulancingo, we had been snubbed by the jefe, who would not treat with us outside of office hours.