Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/218

208 the paseo, or fashionable drive, the sun met us, and smiled responsive to our smile. The road ran along the arches of the aqueduct, looking very Roman, and hiding under them robbers, who not unfrequently here waylay coach and horseman, which is very Roman also.

A half-hour, and we pace along the base of Chapultepec, standing high above the aboriginal pines and cypresses that skirt its base and climb its steep sides. Tacubaya is next passed, a pretty suburb, with superb parks and grounds of Mexican millionaires. Here, a few Saturday nights ago, one of these chiefs, Señor Escandron, gave a fête champetre to nine hundred persons, at an expense, it was said, of forty thousand dollars. Dancing and drinking were the chief amusements of the Sabbath-breaking hour and its preliminary preparation; gambling and gorging were the interludes. These grand pavilions and gardens are so infested with robbers that none of these gentry dare spend a night here except they are strongly guarded. So safe is this country in a large village not four miles from the palace of the President!

Now comes a long pull of a dozen miles up a broad and dusty road, amidst mules and men equally heavy-laden and equally sad-faced—mules often diminishing into donkeys, and men into boys. The human beasts of burden carry on their backs huge crates filled with earthenware and other commodities, weighing, one would guess, several hundred pounds. These are held to their backs by a broad strap going over the forehead, and the hair is left thick, and made to grow thicker over the eyes, in order to make a matting for this strap. I have seen stones and bricks so carried that weighed, I was told, four hundred pounds. Their heads bow to the burden, and they trot along under their huge loads as fast as a horse can walk.

The road ascends the spurs of the Toluca range; through Santa Fé, a string of adobe huts; through Contadera, where a body of troops are stationed that eye us soldierly, that is, quietly and searchingly; and at last leaves us at the venta of Guajimalpa, a wayside station for changing mules on the stage to Toluca.