Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/175

 prepared on little charcoal furnaces without and primitive fire-places within. "Come in!" the busy venders cry; "come in, señors, señoras, and señoritas, and be seated! Aqui los niños! Here is the place for the children! Here is the place where they are appreciated, and no means considered a nuisance!" "Tamales calientitos! dear little tamales, very nice and hot!" they cry. In the same caressing way a cabman in want of a job will call you patroncito, "dear little patron," though you may be as large as a grenadier. They decorate their little stands with turnips and radishes cut into ingenious shapes of flowers, and with a profusion of little birds in wax, and the Mexican Goddess of Liberty astride of an eagle. A swarm of flat-boat men cluster at the edge of the canal, bidding for your patronage. Dancing is going on in almost every court-yard; the ballad-singers strike up lazy refrains; and in the Carcel, in a dirty little plaza, by a fountain, a single prisoner monotonously rattles his wooden grating, and glares out at the gayety like a madman. No self-respecting American prisoner could be induced to stay in a place so easy to escape from. But there is no accounting for tastes.

But are there no real chinampas, no gardens that actually float, according to the tradition? Was all that, then, a myth?

Not at all. The soil hereabouts is solidified now, anchored down, as it were; but it has in its time floated, and in that condition borne crops. Farther on whole expanses are found only kept in position by stakes, with four feet of water below, and yet strong enough to sustain grazing cattle, An expedition was organized, in