Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/365

Rh to twenty miles apart. These divides open into lower parks, circular or oblong, of various sizes, some embracing a hundred square miles, some sixty, some forty, some ten. These parks are usually cultivated, especially in their lower levels, where they can most easily command the needful irrigation. They are beautiful, as seen from the low ridge that incloses them on the north and south, and when under culture are beautiful on closest inspection. Otherwise their parched and wild condition mars their countenance, on a nearer view.

The first divide north of the San Luis Valley on this road opens upon the hacienda of Bocas, or Mouths, as pretty a spot to the eye as one would wish to see. It is a bit of park, full of trees in full leaf, fields of wheat and barley intensely green, and contrasting wonderfully richly with the surrounding nakedness. The drawing up to this hacienda and halting do not improve its effect. The human aspect is not equal to the earthly. It is the more earthly. Boys and old women and men are busy at this early hour in begging for their daily bread. I invested a cuartillia (three cents) in ginger-snaps, cut into the shape of pigs, a favorite form of that gingerbread here, for which three cents I received eighteen of the gingerbread pigs aforesaid. Having been treated so liberally, I felt inclined to treat others liberally, and so dispensed my swinish favors to the boys and girls scattered around.

One boy was especially attractive; he wore his ragged zerape over his naked shoulders, a feat somebody was laughed at for saying Apollo did; but this brown boy Apollo did it. It was in tatters and small at the start, but he wore it as a king. A like ragged girdle was worn in an equally stately manner. He had his kite ready for flying, and was as perfect a model of boy as ever sat to an Italian artist. How Eastman, who painted the "Barefoot Boy," would have delighted to have this ragged, royal, three-fourths naked little scamp sit for his picture! 'Twas easy to give him a ginger-snap pig. I hoped to see him some day not as romantically clad or subclad, in some Christian school, and possibly pulpit. Quien sabe?

A hideous, homely dame was at the fountain, filling her pitcher.