Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/253

Rh fashion, with all their accoutrements smart and new, looked very picturesque. Jackets and trowsers of deer-skin, the jackets embroidered in green, with hanging silver buttons, the trowsers also embroidered and slit up the side of the leg, trimmed with silver buttons, and showing an under pair of unbleached linen; these, with the postilions' boots, and great hats with gold rolls, form a dress which woud faire fureur, if some adventurous Mexican would venture to display it on the streets of London.

We left the city by the gate of Guadalupe, and passed by the great cathedral, our road lying over the marshy plains once covered by the waters of Lake Tezcuco.

To the east lay the great Lake, its broad waters shining like a sheet of molten silver, and the two great volcanoes; the rising sun forming a crown of rays on the white brow of Popocatapetl.

To describe once for all the general aspect of the country on this side of the valley of Mexico; suffice it to say, that there is a universal air of dreariness, vastness and desolation. The country is flat, but always enlivened by the surrounding mountains, like an uninteresting painting in a diamond frame; and yet it is not wholly uninteresting. It has a character peculiar to itself, great plains of maguey, with its huts with uncultivated patches, that have once been gardens, still filled with flowers and choked with weeds; the huts themselves, generally of mud, yet not unfrequently of solid stone, roofless and windowless, with traces of having been fine buildings in former days; the complete solitude, unbroken except