Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/366

354 A girl of fifteen was on one side; one of five on the other. I made friends with the mother by the gift of one of my pigs to the little one. I asked her about her husband. She had none. Was he dead? "No." Where was the father of these children? "In Monterey." How many children had she? "These two only." The same father? "Yes." That conversation revealed the Samaritan-woman condition of this people. Very few are married. It is said the fees of the priest are so high as to prevent it. He asks eight dollars a wedding. But as all marriages now are civil, and the price the State asks is not high, I think the charge against the clergy does not explain the real cause of this social degeneracy. It is in the blood. There was no seeming sense of shame in her answers, no modesty, or lack of it. Far prettier and more affecting was the answer of an old beggar-woman, later in the day, to my inquiry, Where is your husband? She pointed to the ground, and said nothing.

It was a strange feeling that I had as I sat thus by the well, and talked with this poor outcast woman, who is without any clear, convincing conscience, and has no hope except that Christ comes and talks with her and such as her through His ministers and Church. "Lift up your eyes," you can hear Him say, "and behold the field; for it is white already to harvest. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into His harvest."

This hacienda follows us for ten miles, skirting the mountains on the lower or eastern side, and looking rich exceedingly in orchards and fields. The road runs on the higher levels, burned to ashes with six months' rainlessness, but still growing the mesquite in large numbers, which give a pretty wild-wood, rural character to the road, as it winds in and out among the light-green feathery branches.

The mountains come nearer the road on the west, mountains full of silver, the mozo of the coach says; for I have climbed out of my lonely centre to the seat with the driver. The range is called the Sierra Prieto. At its base is a horrible cluster of huts, only four or five feet high in the ridge-pole, covered with thatch, and barbarous almost to the Ottawa condition of debasement. It swings forth the stately title of Mortevillos, which, if it meant "Deadville,"