Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/77

 possess an equipage. It is not thought "exactly proper" for a lady ever to walk, except to mass—or, sometimes, when she goes shopping. The coach, therefore, on all gala days, is sure to appear on the Passeo with its fair burden, dressed in the French style, as for a dinner party or a ball. When I first arrived in Mexico, it was rare to see a bonnet on such occasions; but that awkward appendage of fashionable costume was becoming gradually in vogue before I left.

For an hour, or more, it is the custom to pass up and down the sides of the Passeo, nodding and smiling at the cavaliers, who show off their horsemanship along the centre of the road. Here the utmost luxury and style are exhibited in the equipment of carriage and animals. Gold embroidery, silver plating, and every ornament that can add splendor to harness and livery are brought forth. To such an extent b the taste for these exhibitions carried, that one of the millionaires of Mexico appears occasionally at the Paseo, on a saddle which (without counting the value of the rest of his caparison,) cost the sum of five thousand dollars. It was the chef d'œuvre of an honest German saddler, who made it, and—retired from trade to his beloved "father land."

On approaching this charming drive, the whole plain of the Valley of Mexico is at once revealed to you, without passing a dirty suburb. On your right, is the cypress-covered and castle-crowned hill of Chapultepec, formerly the site, it is alleged, of one of Montezuma's palaces; before you and behind, stretch two immense aqueducts-—the one coming from the hills, the other from a greater distance, near Tacubaya, and screening that village as it leans against the first slopes of the western mountains. On your left tower the volcanoes, on whose summits the last rosy rays of sunset are resting.

The gay throng disperses, as the moon rises from behind the mountains, pouring a flood of clear light, bright as the day in other lands, over the tranquil landscape.

The moonlight of Mexico is marvellously beautiful. That city, you remember, is 7,500 feet above the level of the sea, and nearly that number of feet closer to the stars than we are; the atmosphere, consequently, is more rarefied, and the light comes, as it were, pure, and pellucid from heaven: you seem able to touch the stars, so brilliantly near do they stand out relieved against the back-ground of an intensely blue sky. Strolling on such nights in Mexico, when I saw the sharp lines of tower and temple come boldly out with shape and even color, almost as bright, yet softer than at noon-day, I have often been tempted to say that the moonlight you get at home (much as it is the theme of poets and lovers,) is but second-hand stuff, compared with that of Mexico.

And so with the climates. Between the sea-shore at Vera Cruz and the volcanoes, whose eternal snows hang over Mexico, you have every climate of the world.

In the Valley there is a perpetual spring. For six months in the year (the winter months, as they are called,) rain never falls; during