Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/135

 sunny class-rooms, embroidery-rooms, dormitories, and drawing-rooms of the Viscaynas, the national college for girls; and the arcades and charming central garden of the National Preparatory School (in the professions) for young men. There was a fountain spouting among tropical plants in the garden of the Preparatory School the day I went there, and by the fountain was a young panther, or lion, of the country, as they call it, confined in a cage. The students, young fellows, who did not differ so greatly from Yale and Harvard undergraduates in aspect, except for the dusky Indian complexions among them, came now and then and stirred up the lion a little, making him play with a ball in his cage. They seemed to prepare their recitations walking around the garden or sitting in the ample corridors.

The principal text-books are studied in French or English, in which languages they are apt to be written, and the recitations are conducted in the same languages; so that, what is so rare with us, graduates emerge from these schools very tolerable linguists without ever having been out of their own country.

All these institutions are housed for the most part in the vast ancient convent edifices, which furnish ample quarters to whatever is in need of them—to barracks, hospitals, post-offices, prisons, railway stations, iron founderies, and cotton-mills.

Each state of the republic, again, has its free college. Judging from that of the state of Hidalgo, however, which I saw at Pachuca—its internal arrangements in a very filthy condition—all do not follow very closely the example of the capital. In the department of jails, unhappily, there is a deficiency. As at present arranged, they can present but