Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/342

334 than in ante-railroad times. In fact, the Mexican Railway has usurped the road over which bare-kneed pilgrims traveled, and the shrines are falling into decay since, with Maximilian and Carlotta, clerical rule passed away.

There has always been a great rivalry between the Virgin of Guadaloupe and the Virgin brought over from Spain, Nostra Señora de los Remedios. The latter is an ugly wooden doll about a foot long. It is said to have once belonged to Cortez, and to have been set up by him in the old heathen temple of Mexico. Some of the Spaniards rescued the image at the time of their conflict with the Aztecs, and it was taken away with other valuables and lost in the wreck of the noche triste. When, some time afterward, it was found in the heart of a huge maguey-plant on the top of a bare hill, it was claimed that the Virgin had saved her image by a miracle, and henceforth she was shrined in a golden maguey-flower and worshiped as divine. Many a time the wooden Virgin, seated in a gilded coach and drawn by a nobleman of the highest rank, has been carried through the streets of the capital, while the viceroy humbly walked behind.

The political opinions of these rival Virgins are supposed to be very marked. The republicans were shrewd enough to win the Lady of Guadaloupe to their side at the beginning of the contest, while the Lady de los Remedios was counted upon as a true Spaniard in her sympathies. Each of them had a general's dress and marched with her party when they paraded the streets.

At one time, when the conservatives were despairing of their cause, they began to threaten the Lady de los Remedios for her indifference to their entreaties. They told her that if she would hear their prayers she might keep her situation in the cathedral and wear her jeweled