Did these people ever think,as they watched the sombre, stubborn Gaucho sweating over a tapia, subjecting a drove of peons to his authority, or, stretched upon a hide, growing ferocious as the luck went against him at cards,that here was one of those forces which mould or overturn the world?

Not ten years had elapsed since these very men might have beheld him pounding tapias on this spot!

When his small squadron was come round to Xalisco, he went himself on board, and left Andrew de Tapia to command his land force.

Three days afterwards, he came to the bay where the pilot Ximenez was killed, which he named Bahia de Santa Cruz, where he went on land, and sent out Andrew de Tapia to explore the country.

Volverán las tupidas madreselvas De tu jardí­n las tapias á escalar, Y

tapar, to cover, conceal, cover up, stop up. tapia, f., wall.

It is, however, evident from this example that the quantity of Nahuatl syllables enters too much into the strictly formal part of the language for rules of position, such as some of those above given, to be binding; and doubtless for this reason the eminent grammarian Carlos de Tapia Zenteno, who was professor of the tongue in the University of Mexico, denies that it can be reduced to definite rules of prosody like those of the Latin.

Tapia Zenteno whose Arte Novissima de la Lengua Mexicana was published in 1753, rejects altogether the saltillo, and says its invention is of no use except to make students work harder!

Both were killed, and Alejandro Tapia, a native poet, has immortalized the woman's devotion in a romantic, but purely imaginative, composition.

" Armed with these instructions, and with his appointment as governor ad interim, Ponce returned to San Juan in February, 1510, with his wife and two daughters, settled in Capárra, where, before his departure in 1509, he had built a house of stamped earth (tapia), and where some of the companions of his first expedition had resided ever since.

TAPIA, D. ALEJANDRO.Biblioteca histórica de Puerto Rico.

But Francis de Tapia, the governor of the castle, caused some ordnance to be fired from the castle at the ship, which was bearing in for the port; on which the ship put about, and the people in the boat went again on board.