lights, the people still cling to the old-fashioned methods of hand-work. How the amount of time and labor represented can be afforded for the small amount asked for the wares, is hard to understand. We found here, also, some good forms of pottery in the market-place. The beautiful Calzado — a triple avenue of magnificent trees, floored with broad red flagstones, and lined with low hedges of orange-trees in fruit and blossom — was a delightful promenade. Figs, pomegranates, and oleanders, of larger size than those even of California, made every inch of ground beautiful, and the warm air was sweet with fragrance.
In the streets here we began to see the mantilla, — the graceful black scarf, either of lace or fine wool, which is pinned over the hair and allowed to fall loosely above the shoulders. The women of all grades have an erect and graceful carriage. The dress for the street among the better classes is almost uniformly black; the Indian women wear any and every thing, but usually an embroidered white chemise and colored cotton skirt, surmounted by the inevitable blue reboso. The large market-place, with its collection of cool arches, and great splashing fountains in the centre, is always an attraction. Green pease, fresh fruits, young beets, small tomatoes, and potatoes the size of marbles, were spread about in what seemed to us interminable confusion, but which no doubt had a method of its own. We could forgive much to a place where we could buy roses in bunches as large as one's head for six-and-a-quarter cents.
The plazas were gorgeous with flowers, and on one side street we found a theatre which read us a moral lesson, — a fine edifice of stone, with a great open vestibule sixty feet square as entrance, filled with flower-beds, a fountain in the centre, and domed with glass, into which opened the wide galleries by four separate flights of broad stone steps. Behind every group of eight seats a latticed door gave egress to the gallery on each of the four stories, so that no possible panic could produce more than a momentary result.
Beyond Leon, the mountains, which for some fifty miles had been receding, begin to advance again abruptly. Beautiful with dusky lights and purple shadows, rising majestically into the pure, deep sky, with fertile plains under high cultivation, and groves of magnificent trees, the country has all the elements of great loveliness in its every-day aspect. Soon the hills fall away again, the perfectly flat fields return, and the track begins to wind about the steeply climbing grade which leads to Silao. The organ cactus, a kind of green New-England fence-paling continued upwards to a height of twenty or thirty feet, becomes more and more common, making almost the only division between the small fields of the natives; another cactus, tree-shaped and brutally ugly, begins to appear in groves, very repulsive, and with leprous-looking bulbs of pale blossoms on the ends of the spiked, fleshy leaves. Along the sides of the narrow-gauge road leading from the main line to Marfil, whence tram-cars lead to Guanajuata, mines begin to dot the mountain-sides, and the quiet hurry of a Mexican business district creeps into the scene. The roads become alive with herds of burros laden with every product of tropic or temperate zone, and shambling solemnly, earnestly, lopearedly, toward the distant market town.
Quaintest spot and most delightful in the wide world! The little city of Guanajuato — may its name be written in letters of gold! — has succeeded in charming away the small remnant of common-sense which Mexico has left us. Squalor and poverty, open sewers and the highest death-rate on the continent, were powerless to dim its delightsomeness. A walled city among the mountains, a fortified place set upon the side of heights so steep that the houses seem to be fastened to the rock rather than resting on it, and that a misstep on the dizzy uppermost level of the narrow, high-pitched streets would precipitate the unlucky one into the midst of some plaza three or four hundred feet below. A lovely, bewildering spot, full of lanes and archways, and winding, twisted market-places; with a rabble of picturesque people, selling every oddity under the sun, and a screen of matting; with a crossing and interlacing of narrow, paved ways, which give at every ten steps the effect of a kaleidoscope, with a vista of infinite beauty and novelty at each turning. The upper balconies of the many really beautiful houses were gay with bright awnings and marvellous flowers; the old church of the Jesuits was magnificent in fine arches of soft, pink stone, and wonderful carvings fine as strips of lace-work; the overhanging hills toppled against the deep blue sky wherever one turned, and through a hundred different arches, some vision of softly frescoed, slender-pillared inner courts, bright with blossoms and fresh with greenery, flashed out, no matter how swiftly one passed. From the flat roof of the castle or citadel, where long ago the beloved head of the patriot Hidalgo was perched, ghastly and gory, on the scene of his first triumph, a most exquisite view of the city was to be had. The celebrated reduction works of the fifty mines, which have made the place rich as well as beautiful, — great massive, fortress-like structures of gray stone, perched here and there, far up the mountain-sides, with masses of buttresses and arches and loop-holed, stern walls, — filled the background of each picture, look which way one would. Underneath, and around, and above, — for, high as it was, the climbing city climbed higher still, — the fine network of paved streets ran between softly colored masses of buildings, some like pale green malachite, some of delicate pink, some of deep red sandstone, some of creamy white. The amphitheatre of the bull-ring was just beneath us; a large pottery, where immense piles of red glazed ware caught the sun's rays like so many mounds of rubies, was next; the small flower - decked plazas shone like emeralds. It was a collection of precious things.
Down in the busy streets, for it was market-day, a surging crowd of men, women, burros, and mules jostled each other in ceaseless motion.
Such a mixture of commodities running through every class of merchandise, such a strange grouping of effects, such mingling of sharp cries and liquid voices and strange noises, with the chant of the young boys singing in the prison chapel above all, and the deep, wonderful sky looking down to listen! While we were in the plaza, a beautiful flight of birds, a thousand swift-winged atoms, with a dash of warm red on the dark breasts, wheeled and dipped and rose through the clear air with a rhythm of motion that set the scene to music, and so I desire to remember it.
Into this ravishing spot we were whirled without any more warning than the corners of a few sharp mountains spurs could give us; by one of the fiery little mule tram-cars, that tore at a swinging gallop up four miles of steep hillside, around curves as sharp as a thin woman's elbow, with a swarthy conductor blowing his horn like a bronze Triton on the front platform. It was partly its unexpectedness that charmed, and we forgive even the smells of its carceleria for the delight it brought us.
Still the East and always the East! The marvellous resemblance between this tropical world and the Orient is a constantly new surprise. The sandalled feet, the white garments, the bright wrappings, the public fountains, the walled streets and roads, the low, flat houses, the stone balconies, the deep sky, the dark, grave, silent people! Yesterday, at the hotel of Zacetano, the landlady under the upper arches of the inner court clapped her hands thrice, and a dark-eyed muchacho came noiselessly to her side, received her message, and sped away again through the shadows as silently as if he were a shadow himself. For the outer world and the street, there is the blank wall, the grated window, the bolted door; inside, for the household, the sunny courtyard gay with fountains and flowers, the large open arches throwing grateful shadows over vast, cool rooms, the cordial family life with its treasures hidden from the prying eyes of the multitude. Street-criers calling their wares; fruit-sellers with great trays of luscious unknown sweetness upon their heads; water-carriers with earthen jars slung across the backs of shaggy donkeys; the strange, soft, liquid tones of a foreign language, — is it all near our own land and our own people? Is it not Damascus or Syria, or Constantinople, with the muezzin ready to call to prayer from the gallery of the mosque, and the wandering venders crying through the narrow lanes, "First blush of the hillsides, oh, strawberries!" Out on the haciendas the laborers draw water from shallow wells by means of a long pole balanced across two high-forked sticks, and furnished with a bucket at one end. Poured into the narrow furrows which divide all the land into garden-beds, the water flows at will wherever irrigation is required. The farmer ploughs with a primitive implement that is little more than a sharply pointed stick, fastened to the horns of his oxen by an equally primitive arrangement of ropes. The great lumbering wagons, whether made of wood or of closely joined stems
