312                          TEXAS  AND  MEXICO.
the colour and transparence of a beautiful topaz of
Brazil. As to the ant, it resembles the ordinary ant,
and there it remains in the vesicle as though buried in
its own work. I asked for some details about its repro-
duction, but the existence of this insect is so little
knoAvn that I could never succeed in obtaining any
further information about it.
Don Ignacio, however, had promised me unexpected
revelations. Seeing that I knew as much about the
ant as himself, he began to think awhile, and started a
new topic, in which I did not interrupt him.
" Ten years ago (it was then I herded the flocks of
Dona Trinidad Flores), as I was pursuing a mustang,
I penetrated into a very narrow gorge of the State of
Nuevo Leon. To the right and to the left I saw
only rocks and crags heaped up in confusion, as though
the mountain had fallen in. I observed nothing in the
shape of a tree beyond a plaquemine, a kind of medlar
tree, which grew up in this chaos. I wished to draw
near it, to rest beneath its shade and eat some of
its black SAveet fruit. In climbing up a slope, I
caused some stones covered over by the moss to roll
down, and, in their displacement, they laid bare the
mouth of a deep grotta. I determined on entering ;
but, at a distance of twenty paces, I was brought to a halt
by a wall, which, from feeling it, I found had not been
built with lime and mortar, so that in less than fiAre
minutes I had it all down, and there opened before me a
large lofty room lighted by a fissure in the rock. At the
furthest extremity rose a square altar made of polished
stones, the uppermost consisting of one solid block.
On the altar lay a piece of pure, massive gold, oblong
in form, a foot long by two inches wide, while over the