Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/221

174 and where you require no covering except to shelter you in sleep and showers, you may readily imagine that the dwellings of the people are exceedingly slight. A few canes stuck on end, and a thatch of cane, complete them.

But the broad-leaved plantain, the thready pride of China, the feathery palm, bending over them, and matted together by lacing vines and creeping plants covered with blossoms—these form the real dwellings. The whole, in fact, would look like a picture from Paul and Virginia—but for the figures! Unkempt men, indolent and lounging; begrimed women, surrounded by a set of naked little imps as begrimed as they; and all crawling or rolling over the filth of their earthen floors, or on dirty hides stretched over sticks for a bed. A handful of corn, a bunch of plantains, or a pan of beans picked from the nearest bushes, is their daily food; and here they burrow, like so many animals, from youth to manhood, from manhood to the grave.

After leaving the city, our road lay for some distance along the high table-land, and at length struck into the glen which passes from the west of Cuernavaca, where, for the first time in Mexico, I actually lost the high-road. Imagine the channel of a mountain-stream down the side of an Alleghany mountain, "with its stones chafed out of all order, and many of them worn into deep clefts by the continual tread of mules following each other, over one path, for centuries. This was the main turnpike of the country to the port of Acapulco, and several of our party managed to continue on horseback while descending the ravine; but out of respect both for myself and the animal I bestrode, I dismounted, and climbed over the rocks and gullies to the bottom of the glen, where we crossed a swift stream on a bridge. Ascending from this to the ridge on the opposite side, in rather a scrambling manner, we entered the domain of the hacienda of Temisco, the buildings of which we shortly reached after passing through an Indian village, where most of the laborers on the estate reside.

This is one of the oldest establishments of note in the Republic, and passed, not many years since, into the hands of the present owners for the sum of $300,000. The houses (consisting of the main dwelling, a large chapel, and all the requisite out-buildings for grinding the cane and refining the sugar,) were erected shortly after the conquest, and their walls bear yet the marks of the bullets with which the refractory owner was assailed during one of the numerous revolts in Mexico. He stood out stoutly against the enemy, and mustering his faithful Indians within the walls of his court-yard, repulsed the insurgents.