Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/113

Rh On the same southern route is Puebla, the second largest city oi the republic, — beautiful, with airy, wholesome streets, and clean, fine houses; with a wilderness of old churches, rich in bronzes, tapestries, and valuable pictures; with fine façades glittering in blue and yellow tiles, and a forest of spires and towers in every soft tint under the sun, purple, pink, amber, and azure. We found new products in the market-places; queer mats of pineapple and maguey fibre, pottery decorated in bold relief, brooms and sombreros, and onyx worked into a thousand ornamental shapes. And presiding over a tawny heap of oranges and a fragrant mass of pineapples, we found the Queen of Sheba, her great eyes shining under a broad straw hat, her plump, dusky shoulders rising from the richly embroidered recesses of her white camisa, her bare, small feet and ankles showing under the short scarlet skirt with its barbaric trimming, and a soft, floating sash of vivid colors loosely knotted about her supple waist. She was walking, with a superb step, through the shadows of the arched portales as I first saw her, and her gait revealed the goddess. I am sorry to say she was walking