Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/50

 sap furnishes in extraordinary quantities the beverage called pulque—the wine of the country. From it, in addition, are made thatch, fuel, rope, paper, and even stuffs for wearing apparel. Our third-class passengers celebrated their Sabado de Gloria with great spirit, by shouting, and firing pistols and Chinese crackers from the car windows. Teams of mules, with their load, whatever it might be, gayly adorned, showed that it was being equally observed in the country. It is a day devoted by custom to the particular abasement of Judas, who is treated as a kind of Guy Fawkes and dishonored in effigy. Venders parade the streets with grotesque images of him, and children at this time estimate their fortune in the number of Judases they possess, just as at the season of All-Souls it is in cakes, gingerbread, and even more substantial viands, fashioned into death's-heads, cross-bones, and coffins.

At Apizaco, the junction of a branch-road to Puebla, we met a merry excursion, decorated with rosettes and streamers. It had two mammoth Judases, stuffed with fire-works, one on the locomotive, the other on a baggage-car. The former was blown up, as a kind of compliment to us by way of exchange of ceremonies with our own train, amid hilarious uproar.

We had now entered upon the central table-land of Mexico. Long, dotted, perspective lines of maize and maguey stretched to distant volcanic-looking hills. A few laborers in white cotton were ploughing with wooden ploughs, after the pattern of the ancient Egyptians. At the stations squads of a mounted rural police, in buff leather uniforms and crimson sashes, which give them a certain resemblance to Cromwell's troopers, salute the train,