Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/362

354 above the sea, the climate is almost perfect all the year round and well suited to invalids. It is regularly built, with the principal streets wide, straight and swept clean by convict labor. The plaza has its beautiful flowers and shrubbery and is surrounded by a broad promenade. In the centre is a great fountain whose large, deep basin overflows with pure water brought from an artificial reservoir in the mountains, six miles away. Morning and evening, with tall earthen jars poised on their heads, the swarthy Mexican women come to get their supply of water in this public square. The massive stone arches of the aqueduct which brings the stream are quite a feature in the suburban landscape of Chihuahua. Continuous house-fronts are quite as common here as in other cities. It has its poor quarter, where this class huddle together in miserable hovels, but most of the city has a bright and cheerful appearance. Houses are built of light-gray stone, with the owner's monogram carved over the doorway, while gilded bars defending the windows cut in the heavy walls tell of days when every dwelling was a fortress.

The police-force of the Mexican cities is generally very efficient. In Chihuahua watchmen walk the city all day with revolvers ready for action; at night they don a great serape, shoulder a gun and patrol the streets with huge square lanterns, calling out to each other with ostentatious regularity; and woe betide the offender who is caught disturbing the public peace and quiet in a less orderly manner than they do themselves! The next day finds him hard at work in the chain-gang, from which he never escapes until he has suffered the utmost rigor of the law.

Six hundred miles farther south, on the same rail