Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/130

128 platform, in search of contraband goods; that is, unless you travel as we did, in a party, and under such honorable auspices that they take your honesty for granted, and pass your luggage untouched. The enormous rate of duty charged between this country and Mexico is something stupendous. Naturally, in a strange land, one likes to pick up here and there some memento of the new people, some trifles of dress or adorning, to make large the wondering eyes of the little tribe at home, and dissipate a little of the obscurity hanging about this far-away world. You gather a penny bit of pottery here, and a shilling vase there. You negotiate for a zarape at Leon, and a pair of coarse leather sandals at Zacatecas. You buy a broken idol at Cholula, a reboso at Silao, a basket at Guanajuato, an onyx paper-weight at Puebla, a handful of opals at Queretaro. And, of course, you get a Guadalahara water-jar, some Aguas Calientes feather-work, a cotton image at Chihuahua, a Guadalupe duck, and a living, breathing, delicious Mexican mocking-bird. Thus much, at least; with probably some of the very cheap trifles which belong distinctively to each little town; so that in the end you have a practical exposition