ing with the shepherd, which I reported to Hon. Henry S. Randall, of Rochester, the most able writer on sheep husbandry of our time. His compliments are not material, but my predictions as to woolgrowing in that country and the need of care with flocks, have been more than verified in poor results, due to lack of care and the delusion that wool is a "raw material", which will not soon find an echo in an official message after 1888. Nearing the terminus of the railroad, then at Byron, one hundred miles north from Galveston, there were hours of ecstatic expectation. The boom of the age in locomotion can only be appreciated after snail-like movements for weeks, and attendant fears, aches, delays and night inhaling of miasma, contrasted with safety and celerity, inspiring the sentiment of Saxe – "Bless me, this is pleasant riding on a rail."

The scream of the locomotive heard in the distance was a friend's welcome, and the headlight hurrying in a race after it was like the shining of a good deed in a naughty world. It was a truthful engineer who said, I kissed the steam box, but I was not a crazy man. Not an earthly object, so said the reporter at dinner, save woman, seemed so comely and lovely in promise of ministries to a weary, forlorn traveler. Houston, a city of twenty thousand people, had, by a mayor and council, tendered me a dinner, on the rumor that I was a protégé of railway capitalists; not the first time that fictitious heralding has brought notoriety. The only incident related to this affair, was my excuse for leaving before the last glasses were drained. I apprised the mayor that the citizens of Grinnell were supporting a lady teacher in their schools, and I was to visit her. "I regret the occasion, but I do not know the lady." It was only by a call on several colored drivers that the location of the school-house was learned, and I was driven to it. Approaching the church turned into a school-house, I saw a row of colored men leaning against the building. I should not have known pupils from sentinels - many in faded American blue coats but for a book in hand. They were voluble, and rivals in the service of introducing the white man to "missus". An accomplished lady made me very welcome, having been advised of my visit. What a school-room and how ludicrous the position of the occupants! A juvenile row of spellers were toeing the crack, everyone barefoot. On benches the pupils were at full length. The elevated pulpit platform was covered with sleepers,

black, yellow and dubious shades, like mosaic in color. An apology was soon made for the position of the pupils in slumberthat after a walk of from two to six miles to the school, there was weariness which forbade study without rest. The success of these schools is a high tribute to the teachers from the North, socially ostracized by white people. Returning to the hotel, I recounted the incidents of my visit to the mayor, who was surprised that we were educating colored people, in charge of a lady of whom he had never heard. "I will call upon her," he said, and did, to appreciate her service and lift the cloud of social neglect. By hearty, yet not quite official recognition, he brightened the days of a stranger engaged in the good offices of a teacher, in the line of service under the Freedman's Bureau.

Galveston was the city on the Gulf, putting on the airs of a mistress without a rival in the state. It escaped from the burdens of civil war, and the discouragements which clouded so many in commercial pursuits who were waiting on northern capital and enterprise, which, however, up to this date has neither been appreciated nor always rewarded by fair returns from liberal investments. The last days of April were most oppressive with heat, and a breeze at night from the Gulf the most refreshing cordial I recall on many journeys. The wind was welcome, though furious, and the novelty of the morning view was a vessel, full rigged, in one of the main streets, driven there by one of those storms common on the Gulf. Bolivar Point, by reason of bad title or official silence, was not the great natural sea-port, not even a rival to Galveston, with deep water and natural harbor. My errand of observation, relating to a bonus held out by a railroad corporation, was restricted, yet I left for New Orleans after a gathering of facts of use to other parties and with a large accumulation of valued experiences.

MEXICO.

It has been my fortune to travel in all parts of the western United States and Territories, and to Mexico. To the land of the Montezumas I went in part for health, but chiefly as one invited to go on a tour of observation. Some notices of the social, industrial and agricultural condition there in 1887, with an estimate of President Diaz, and a visit to Protestant missions, may have more than a personal interest.

The country has an area twenty times the size of New England, and the grand mountain, burning Popocatepetl, rising three miles with his white crown, fills an American with wonder. My nearest view was from the ancient Chapultepec, three miles from the city Plaza. It is a fortress in nature, girded by art and beautified by all the skill of arboriculture, decked with memorials of the ill-fated Maximilian, on whose couch I leaned, with a tear for Carlotta, the ambitious bride, giving room to the young wife of President Diaz. Blessings on his reign! He made me welcome where he dines in state, and I bore away a bouquet from the spray of the fountains where Montezuma wept three hundred years ago.

The city is mainly of adobe buildings, giving little indication of such luxurious life as I found at General Frisbie's, and other eastern-born and western-reared gentlemen, whose fountains, flowers and paintings are a reflection of artistic tastes and generous hospitality. The city is in a basin 7,000 feet above the sea, but is to be drained, under Colonel Harris, an American engineer, at an expense of millions of dollars. One can linger long in the cathedral, the largest on the continent, and nearly a hundred years in rearing. In the museum and art galleries, all the gods in stone have a place for money, as plain as the channel for the flow of blood from the "sacrificial stone", which, by tradition, had an office for hundreds of years, and on which millions laid their heads for sacrifice. Mexican painters have not held a high rank, but there are traces of genius on the walls, and no doubt it is an honest portraiture of the generals and presidents, some of whom I have seen in Washington. Juarez has a strictly Indian face, and answers to our martyred Lincoln as president and friend of good order and progress; honest, and for the last thirty years no friend of a state religion.

Oh, the cloud that hung over Mexico for three hundred years! What slavish toil, blood and death were in religious despotism, for which so many millions now nurse their hate. The priestly livings are gone, but a thousand cathedrals are occupied by the Catholics at the will of the President. Indeed, in rides of two thousand miles, I estimate the cost of the churches more than that of the homes of the people. Yet there are lessons we can learn from the inhabitants. They post your letters at once in the sight of all. The car and hack service is swifter, prompter and costs less than in the United States. The policeman is never, save by an alarm,

more than fifty feet from his bright lantern in the center of each street corner. Of drunkenness and violence in the streets I saw none. In fact, in the interest of labor and sobriety, they close up the beer-saloon at six o'clock P. M. Their hand-shaking, bowing, embracing, is not mere fashion, but the spontaneity of a race only waiting for a free religion and an elevating civilization to take that high place of which so many of the land of Cortez gave promise. A new era dawned with the introduction of railroads, six years ago, and no passenger has yet lost his life in traveling over them.

I should have larger hope for the Republic could there be a colonization upon the rich, well watered lands. Hundreds of thousands of acres can now be purchased cheaply. Then our better methods of labor, rearing stock and making cloth, would be a study and inspiration; brute muscle would be in service in place of slavery, and the way would open for an introduction of the Protestant faith.

The best of American horses are driven or ridden in these streets. Cattle are seen in great droves on the plains, where new, fresh blood will be infused from the north; and Mexican sheep, white and fat, will be crossed for wool, where good pastures abound and mutton is the popular food. Swine are almost unknown, yet I have seen a fair specimen held by a string in the hands of a Peon, while grazing. I saw fifty-seven yoke of oxen in one field, at pronged wood ploughs, drawing by the horns, yet steel ploughs are coming. Coal and iron ore from Durango are to meet, that money may be made in mining, food better cooked, and a new civilization known. Man has yet to do his part among a people, active, artistic, brave and devout, where God has sent balmy air, grand scenery, a soil rich in producing good crops of corn for hundreds of years, and the finest grass, not one blade in a thousand used for food.

Mexico, as I have seen it for 1225 miles, is mainly dry and sterile, yet never out of the shadow of mountains and of the grandest scenery of the world. The valleys are rich and have two crops a year. Beans and corn are the staple food, the latter soaked and rolled by women into paste, which is eaten by Peons — fourfifths of the people; coffee being their drink, or pulque, like milk and water in color, and having, say, four per cent. of alcohol. The laborers live on less than seven cents a day, including their cheap soup, sugar and coffee.

The mining towns, of which there are more than 100 in Mexico, are full of life-street railways, elegant riders showing off the finest of American horses under the saddle, and gay families in the glitter of jewels and rustle of silks, in great glee, in coaches, this city of Mexico furnishing the climax - a full view of show, gayety and squalor. The laden donkeys are quite as numerous as the laborers you pass-all courteous and civil in the profusion of hand-shaking.

The power of the Church is broken, and since Maximilian was shot, the Catholic usurper, religion has been free, and the advances for twenty years are a marvel. Dr. Butler, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, is a representative Christian laborer, with our townsman, Rev. Samuel F. Craver, with his accomplished lady and two boys, at Queretaro, a city of 40,000 people, 150 miles north of Mexico. He is florid and stout, and you may guess the welcome by a noble son of Iowa College, and missionary of manly devotion, to the only person from Grinnell greeted at his home and foreign residence for twelve years! The Mexican adobe house of the family-property of the Methodist Episcopal Church, has as much room as the elegant residence of his brother, Charles F., besides school-rooms and chapel under one roof, with open promenade on top and a court with trees and flowers in the rear, all barricaded by the custom of the country with bars, heavy locks and huge doors on two or three occasions of service, to repel fierce and angry religionists, now quiet, in sullen toleration. This house is not unlike an hacienda-farm-house-barricaded, with port holes, like castles and cathedrals, all evidences of fierce barbarisms and fear of hostile invasions.

I attended a chapel meeting, where dogs in concert, martial bands in the street, and the peal of loud cathedral bells could not drown the quiet voices of Protestant singing of Mexican girls in "Hold the Fort", etc., nor break the solemnity of a circle in prayer. Mr. Craver has some seven preaching stations, and in rearing churches and in missionary labor has rode this year 12,000 miles. As I named rest, and yielding for a time to younger recruits, the reply was, "No! A visit would be pleasant, but this is the place of duty if separation from home costs us tears of regret. It is better to follow the Master and die among these people, long degraded and the victims of bigotry, than to accept ease and refined society in Iowa." This is courage and devotion which