Part i.—The Governor's Daughter

In the outskirts of the city of Chihuahua, capital of the Mexican province of the same name, are a series of low and straggling huts composed of adobes, or unburnt bricks. Few houses in New Mexico are of any superior material, though in the good city of Chihuahua, many of the better sort have certainly the advantage of being cornered with hewn stone, while the doors and windows 

are similarly constituted. The shops or stores, as they are called by the Americans, their principal owners, are of the same material ; and I have been assured by Mr. O'Hara, a merchant who resided many years in this distant mart, and whom I knew during my residence in Galveston, Texas, the show of finery in them, particularly in the article of dress, would not disgrace a provincial town in the United States, or many a rural district nearer home.