Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/258

252 A contrasting scene was presented as we passed through the great doorway on our way out. Two men—one of them very old, with a pair of green spectacles which looked as if made by a blacksmith—were deeply engaged in singing from a home-manufactured book, as I discovered by peeping over, a rude chant, without rhyme, reason, time, tune, or ending. They sang with gusto, oblivious of the interest with which we regarded them, and each utterly regardless of what the other was singing. It was the strangest duet that was ever framed—two cracked voices, in utter discord, the singers as serious as pictured saints. The faces of the men, the spectacles, the book, the rattling discord of the duet, seen and heard by the dim light of a tallow dip, flickering in the December wind, formed a woe-begone scene that should be painted by a Hogarth.

The chapel on the hill of Tepayac can be reached only by a tiresome tramp up, perhaps, two hundred steps, cut in the side of the mountain, and here we were held in unbroken admiration of the scene below. The valley, bathed in the chastened light of a glorious full moon, lay serenely at our feet and stretched beyond to its mountain limits in the dim distance. The air was sweet, balmy and refreshing, even on that mid-December night. All this was the handiwork of nature in her sublimest moods. But what a contrast when we turned to the little plaza in front of the grand cathedral and beheld the multitudinous assemblage of human beings on grand parade, in fatigue suits and undress uniforms! True, the mellow moonlight was over them, as over us; but nearer were the flare of torches; the flickering of camp-fires, by the lights of which the crowds moved about like characters in pantomime, and with the Babel of voices, the songs of the Indians, the fire-crackers and sky-rockets, suggested to us on the height, instead of a vast religious congregation, rather a demoniacal pandemonium. Now and again the swelling notes of the organ were heard above the din, but these were soon lost in the pealing of bells from the towers as they revolved rapidly in the gay lights of the national colors, until the valley was filled with their deep-toned utterances.