Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/392

372 of its use, assuring her customer that it was an instrument for unraveling the hair, and making it beautiful and shining, and enforcing her argument by combing through some of the girl's tangled locks.

Before breakfast we went to mass, in the large chapel of the hacienda. We and the family went to the choir; and the body of the chapel was filled with rancheros and their wives. It is impossible to see, anywhere, a finer race of men than these rancheros; tall, strong, and well made, with their embroidered shirts, coarse sarapes, and dirk blue pantaloons embroidered in gold. After mass, the marketing recommenced, and the rebosos had a brisk sale. A number were bought by the men, for their wives or novias at home; which reminds me of a story of 's, of a poor Indian woman in their village, who desired her husband to buy a petticoat for her in Mexico, where he was going to sell his vegetables. She particularly impressed upon him that she wished it to be the color of the sky, which at sunrise, when he was setting off, was of a flaming red. He returned in the evening, bringing, to her great indignation, a petticoat of a dusky gray, which happened to be the color of the sky when he made his purchase.

In the evening we rode through the fields, the servants and the young master of the house amusing themselves as they went, by the chasing and colear of the bulls. They have one small, ugly, yellow-colored bull, which they call tame, and which the mozos ride familiarly. They persuaded me to try this novel species of riding, a man holding the animal's head with a rope; but I thought that it tossed its horns