Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/298

250 numbers of women with oranges, pears, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, lemons, guyavas, aguacates, chirimoyas, plantains, fish and eggs, swell the increasing crowds. The butcher drives along a diminutive donkey, on whose saddle he has erected his peripatetic shambles, filled with beef or mutton, whilst, at the corners and on the edge of the side walks, sit long rows of Indian women with pans of savory chile sauces and heaping baskets or cloths of steaming tortillas. All these eager venders of the necessaries and luxuries of life, engage public attention by shouting the quality and value of their wares at the top of their voices. Sound and motion are the predominant features of the varied panorama; and the stunned stranger is glad to retreat into quiet nooks and byeways in which he meets the stately gentlewoman and cavalier, dressed in the becoming habiliments of their station. When ladies go abroad in Mexico to shop or visit, they universally use their coaches; yet every woman daily walks to mass,—and, whilst engaged in this religious pilgrimage, exhibits the old and habitual costume of black silk gown and lace mantilla, which she has derived from her Spanish ancestors. This is a charming dress. It exposes the black, lustrous hair of the graceful wearers, and fully develops that majestic yet feminine gait with which the Mexican women seem to glide and undulate along their path. The inseparable fan,—her constant companion, play thing and interpreter, in the saloon, the ball room, the theatre or the church,—rests carelessly, in her right hand, which coquettishly clasps the folds of her mantilla; and, from beneath its silken folds, her large lustrous eyes gleam soft and languishingly above her pale but healthful cheeks. If Mexican ladies are not so variously beautiful as the women of northern lands, in whose veins the blood of many nations has mingled, they are most loveable creatures in spite of the uniformity of their national type. There is a degree of exquisite tenderness, and an expression of affectionate sincerity, in the face of Mexican women, which instantly wins not only the respect but the confidence of the gazer. Nor does their character in real life contradict their amiable physiognomy. Faithful as a friend and as a wife, the Mexican lady is a person, who, with the educational advantages enjoyed by their northern sisters, would rightfully maintain as high a position in the social scale, with, perhaps, a more delicate degree of sensibility.

The lower classes of females are of course different from the upper ranks both in appearance and personal qualities. They are of impure blood. Spaniard, Indian, Negro and Malay, have