Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/259

Rh floor, with the door wide open; and though we talked loud, and walked about in the cottage, the little thing never wakened. A second shower drove us for shelter to a farm house, where we entered a sort of oratorio attached to the house; a room which is not consecrated, but has an altar, crucifix, holy pictures, &c. The floor was strewed with flowers, and in one corner was an old stringless violoncello, that might have formed a pendant to the harp of Tara.

However, the most remarkable object of the rancho, is its proprietress, a tall, noble-looking Indian, Doña Margarita by name, a mountaineer by birth, and now a rich widow, possessing lands and flocks, though living in apparent poverty. The bulk of her fortune she employs in educating poor orphans. Every poor child who has no parents, finds in her a mother and protectress; the more wretched, or sick, or deformed, the more certain of an asylum with her. She takes them into her house, brings them up as her own children, has them bred to some useful employment, and when they are old enough, married. If it is a boy, she chooses him a wife from amongst the girls of the mountains, where she was born, who she says are "less corrupted" than the girls of the village. She has generally from twelve to twenty on her hands, always filling up with new orphans the vacancies caused in her small colony by death or marriage. There is nothing picturesque about these orphans, for, as I said before, the most deformed and helpless, and maimed and sick, are the peculiar objects of Doña Margarita's care; nevertheless, we saw various healthy, happy-