Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/253

Rh strange visitors, by a great increase of their volubility. Schools are everywhere, and these poor people can read and write very well, but have not any thing to read, and no occasion to write.

They are catching zapote from a tall tree, and I learn how to gather nice apples and peaches without a basket, or without hurting them. A boy far up in the tree picks the fruit, and cries out, Vaminos" (here we go). A man below holds his blanket, or zerape, and catches the apple-shaped zapote, and rolls it easily upon the ground. The cry, the catch, the roll are instantaneous. It will be well to copy this in other orchards.

The emperor had a garden here also, given him by the Indians, with their centavos, tlaquas, or cent-and-a-half pieces, and cuartillias (I spell these phonographically), or three-cent bits. A cottage was nearly finished, but never occupied, the veranda opening on a bath. It was a spot of luxurious idleness. He liked to come here and hide from the cares of state. In a little school-room near the church, in the farther of the two school districts, he gave a ball to the natives. They hold his memory dear; the only place in Mexico that it is thus esteemed. His garden is fast becoming a desolation, and ere many years his brick, open, unfinished cottage will be buried under this abounding life.

A sugar hacienda completed our Cuernervaca experiences. It is four miles from town. Horses carry us easily hither over a road impassable to carriages. High walls and strong inclose the court-yard of the hacienda. Indian workmen have their cane-huts just outside. Inside the wife of the administrador welcomes us gracefully, and offers coffee, chocolate, cognac, and cold water. We accept the last and best. She takes us round the works.

The first apartment is devoted to grinding the cane, which is crushed between heavy rollers, the husk passing out, literally squeezed to death, the juice running a steady stream, of the volume seen in an open water-spout in a steady rain, along channels or troughs to vats in the next compartment. Then it passes into boilers about ten feet deep, four feet of copper, two of brick, and four of wood. The copper only holds the liquid; the upper part,