Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/17

Rh two tall campanile of the cathedral dominating the landscape, and the low, flat-roofed houses lying upon the terra-cotta surface of the valley with a most Oriental effect. Indeed, every thing about the spot is distinctly Eastern. Across the plain, as one rides from the station to the town, the scrapes of the horsemen recall the burnous of the Arab. So does the magnificent horsemanship, as the riders fly over the open country. Inside the city streets, long colonnades of rude Moorish arches outside the houses, offer grateful shelter from the mid-day sun; the outer walls are frescoed in bright blue, yellow, or red; there is a mosque-life effect about the great central domes of the churches. Broad stone seats with high backs, like those in Alma-Tadema's pictures, line the principal streets under soft shadows of fanlike trees; clumps of Mexican aloe and prickly cactus hedge the roadways. There is a barbaric richness of ornamentation about the façade of the principal church, carved in solid stone by native artists from native designs; but it loses somewhat, upon closer inspection, from its crude conception of art. It is, however, greatly superior to the more tawdry and more insincere