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MEXICO IN 1827.
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ciently felt before to make the people duly sensible of the importance of this service.

They are, therefore, not unnaturally regarded as interlopers, come merely to share in advantages which the natives considered formerly as their patrimony; and as this feeling has been fomented by those who might have given it a better direction, it has more than once been upon the point of leading to very serious results. I had been prepared for this state of things by the reports of Captain Vetch and Captain Lyon, who, at a time when the safety of the individuals employed by the Bolaños Company was thought to be endangered, had very properly solicited, through me, the protection of the President. But my communications with the Governor of the State, upon my arrival in Zacatecas, inspired me with a belief that these angry feelings had subsided, until I was undeceived by the treatment which my own party experienced. Mrs. Ward usually employed her time in drawing while I was visiting the mines; and, though always surrounded by a crowd, she never experienced the slightest incivility upon such occasions, except at Veta Grande. In general, people were much delighted with the novelty of the performance; and I have seen Indians standing round her for an hour together, watching every motion of the pencil, and holding in turn an umbrella to shelter her from the sun. At Guanajuato, where fifty or sixty people were collected, while she was taking a view of the town from the Va-