Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/31

Rh the blazing sands of this holiday season to the cool arches of the collector's house. That gentlemanly official welcomes us to Progresso, the name of this new town. This name shows its newness, and also, possibly, that a Yankee had something to do with its christening; for the Mexican has hardly yet learned that there be such a thing as progress, much less that it can be concentrated into a town, though he indulge in titular progress, and put into names what his Northern brothers put into fact.

Our gentlemanly collector leads us through his official rooms into the domestic apartments, and introduces us to his family. He is a Spaniard, his wife a Cuban, and his three adopted daughters are representatives of the three races, so called, that hold harmonious possession of this soil. They consist of a white young lady of Anglo-Saxon lightness of complexion, seemingly of a Northern European origin, her adopted parents being dark to her; another, slightly her junior, whose tint is of that Afric sort that Mrs. Kemble Butler deemed richer than any European, and whose opinion our former aristocracy confirmed by their conduct; and the third was a pure Indian belle, none the less beautiful in contour and complexion, a half-way house between these two extremes of human colors. We did not see the Pocahontas of the family, but the Cleopatra and Boadicea were among our agreeable entertainers. They were dressed just alike, in neat, light, brown-checked muslins, with girlish modesty of array and manner that was cultivated and charming. Our ignorance of Spanish put a barrier between us, but their bearing was sisterly and filial; and we accepted this index of the New America as a token of the superiority of Yucatan over the United States, and a proof of the fitness of the name of the town. Had many an American father recognized, not his adopted, but his actual family, a like variety would have been visible about the paternal board. It will yet be, and without sin or shame, as in this cultivated circle.

The host offered us the milk of the cocoa-nut in large goblets, and grapes preserved in their natural shape. One cocoa-nut makes a tumbler of limpid water sweet and agreeable. His