Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/32

30 great health resorts of the world. It only needs enterprise and steadfastness, — two qualities not uncommon in the East or West of our own country.

Leon, a city of seventy-five thousand or a hundred thousand people, better supplied with water from the numerous wells, and therefore more beautiful with trees and shade, is extremely interesting, as showing the immense stride which steady employment of any form enables the people to make. Almost every house has its hand-loom, worked as in the old scriptural times, — heavy, cumbrous, and slow, but capable of producing wonderfully good results. One part of the city is given to the manufacture of zarapes, the other to that of rebosos. As nine-tenths of the population wear one or the other, the industry is well established. Although one sees telegraph-wires and telephones, sewing-machines and street-cars, even gas and electric lights, the people still cling to the old-fashioned methods of hand-work. How the amount of time and labor represented can be afforded for the small amount asked for the wares, is hard to understand. We found here, also, some good forms of pottery in the market-place. The