Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/82

80 the quarries on men's backs, and the gravel carried from the pits in sacks on men's shoulders? Even the electric lights at night have an eerie look. They were always unnatural, with their cold white glare and frozen sparkle; but they are a thousand times more unnatural here, glittering above a people and a country as primitive as if the world were a thousand years younger. Those pale candles, like farthing rushlights, that disturb the dark no more than so many glow-worms — they are the Lights o' Mexico for the present.

It is the common people who are the principal interest to the traveller. Clinging yet with Indian pertinacity to ancient customs, following, even in dress, traditions two or three hundred years old, they seem as removed from the pressure of changeful events as the fossil remains of another age brought into the light of day. They work with what might be called passion, so intense is their application to any assigned task. But that over, the relapse into stolid indifference is as complete as before. Good or bad, the gentle, trusting, superstitious, timid, easily yielding nature of the ancestors is continued in the descendants. They could be led to noble ends: they have been