Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/119

 Until recently, there were in the city of Puebla two sisters, remarkable for the manufacture of figures from rags. These ladies were of respectable birth, and always commanded a ready sale for their works, which were sought for even in Europe. They moulded the figures of lumps of beeswax, covered the different parts of the body with cotton cloth of colors suited to the complexion, and, while the wax was yet soft, moulded the features into the required expression, completing the representation with appropriate dresses. I have two of these in my possession, which, in point of character, are worthy of the pencil of Teniers. They represent an old Indian woman, scolding and weeping over her drunken son. The grief and age of the one, and the tipsy leer, roll of the head, and want of command over the limbs of the other, are rendered with indescribable faithfulness. One of these remarkable artists died while I was in Mexico, and the other is extremely old and feeble, so that it has now become a matter of great difficulty to obtain a specimen of her works; nor can they hereafter be as perfect as formerly, as the sister who died was remarkable for her perfection in forming the figures, while the greater talent of finishing and giving expression, was the task of the survivor. Both duties now devolve on her, and what with age and the loss of her companion, her hand seems to have lost much of its cunning.

But let us retrace our way to the Museum.

Turning from the statue of Charles IV. in the centre of the court-yard, to the left-hand side of the quadrangle, you observe the arcades at that end covered with panels of wood, ten or fifteen feet high, and apparently filled with boxes, old bookcases, old stones, and a quantity of lumber. A real to the porter will, however, admit you to the inclosure, and you will be surprised to find amid that mass of filth, dirt, and refuse furniture, relics of antiquity for which thousands would be gladly paid by the British Museum, the Louvre, the Glyptotheca of Munich, or, indeed, by any enlightened Sovereign, who possessed the taste to acquire and the money to purchase.

You see a mimic tree, with a stuffed bear climbing up it; a bleached and hairless tiger-skin dangling from the ceiling; half-a-dozen Indian dresses made of snake-skins, fluttering on the wall; and, amid all this confusion, towers aloft the grand and hideous Indian idol of ; the great, (with a stone cross now erected in the middle to sanctify it;) the celebrated statue of the , not long since disinterred; a colossal head of serpentine, in the Egyptian style of sculpture; the two carvings of the Feathered Serpents, already described in my letter on Cholula; while, on the benches around the walls, and scattered over the floor, are numberless figures of dogs, monkeys, lizards,