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180 to see, and the people are so kind and friendly. Having got riding horses, we have been making excursions all round the country, especially early in the morning, before the sun is high, when the air is delightfully cool and refreshing. Sometimes we go to the Viga at six in the morning, to see the Indians bringing in their flowers and vegetables, by the canal. The profusion of sweet pease, double poppies, blue bottles, stock gilly-flower, and roses, I never saw equalled. Each Indian woman, in her canoe, looks as if seated in a floating flower-garden. The same love of flowers distinguishes them now, as in the time of Cortes; the same which Humboldt remarked centuries afterwards. In the evening, these Indian women, in their canoes, are constantly crowned with garlands of roses or poppies. Those who sit in the market, selling their fruit or their vegetables, appear as if they sat in bowers formed of fresh green branches and colored flowers. In the poorest village church the floor is strewed with flowers, and before the service begins, fresh nosegays are brought in and arranged upon the altar. The baby at its christening, the bride at the altar, the dead body in its bier, all are adorned with flowers. We are told that in the days of Cortes, a bouquet of rare flowers was the most valuable gift presented to the ambassadors who visited the court of Montezuma, and it presents a strange anomaly, this love of flowers having existed along with their sanguinary worship and barbarous sacrifices.

We went the other evening on the canal, in a large canoe, with an awning, as far as the little village