Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/314

304 a smaller spoonful of chilli, or pepper-sauce, folding them up for the driver and his mozo. This combination is not bad.

There were not unfrequently stands by the roadside under a cactus-bush, and sometimes dinners, and sometimes dwellers there. The two chief towns, Salamanca and Irapuato, are not far from Guanajuato. The first is pretty; the last, beautiful. I have seen none more so. It contains a population of twenty thousand. The houses are freshly and prettily washed; and it is lively withal. I sauntered through the plaza, talking and being talked to by beggars many. How lovely are these plazas, with all manner of lovely flowers! How unlovely their human weeds! How strange such beauty can be so beset! When shall our country villages see their greens and squares thus transformed? Will they then be equally deformed? I found this place had a local fame, and was the Northampton or Canandaigua on which a traveler might stumble, and fancy he had made a discovery, when lo! their beauties had long held a high place among their neighbors. So this city is a favorite the country round. It deserves to be. No preacher need be sorry if he is stationed at Irapuato. He will enjoy every minute of his triennium.

The road runs on, still smooth and velvety, amidst hollows and Peru-trees, and the mesquite. We pass the hacienda of asses (a large and popular one, of course), and come to the hills that evidently conclude the valley. Our prairie is gone. What you could not do in a day in Illinois, we have done in exactly that time. We turn to the mountains on our right hand. They encircle us close, coming round in front, having been for a hundred miles on both wings. There is no way, seemingly, through, or over, or into; and yet a city of fifty to sixty thousand inhabitants, the greatest silver town in the land, is right close to us, in among these bald, rocky bluffs. There must be a valley over there in which it lies embosomed. But where it can be, or how, are conundrums too hard for us. The plains are deserted, and we begin to wriggle in and out the spurs. We climb the hill slightly and softly, our good genius of the road still keeping off the stones. No valley the other