Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/397

Rh degree, good inward also. A big room opened on a broad shaded patio. Singing birds and birds of rich plumage made it all the more home-like. It seemed more beautiful, perhaps, than it was; for the contrast with ranchos and horrid Ceral and dirty Chalcos and wild half-desert living was as sudden as if it had been a new revelation from Heaven.

Especially was it nearer home. One could almost fancy that he was home; for only one day separated him from Monterey, and that was the next town to Matamoras, and that adjoined the United States. It was so near, it seemed as if the dome of Washington must appear over that farther rise of inclosing mountains. But it took long and wearisome days to bring that dome into view.

The clean skin and clean shirt being secured, the town is subjected to inspection. It is soon done. A half-dozen streets run east and west along the upper edge of the plain; a dozen or two, narrow and dirty, cross them. One-story white and tinted adobe dwellings line these streets. There are no sidewalks. The plaza is without ornament. The cathedral is cheap and frowzy. Every thing is asleep.

There is one beauty—the alameda. This lies at the foot of the street, toward the west; it is the prettiest I had seen in all the country. It is lined all around with a hedge of rose-bushes, then in bloom, perhaps always so; its paths are richly shaded. It lies close to the base of high hills, and a river babbles along its edge, which invades its own borders, with its minor streams of irrigation. Outside, the brook gets up a sort of independent alameda, in an open pasture, where it gallops among apple and olive trees at its own wild will.

I find in this city two gentlemen of my own language. One, then far gone in consumption, has since passed away. He had a strange marriage experience. He had remained unmarried till he had reached the ripe age of thirty-five or forty. His master left him in charge, and went to Europe. A rancho beauty came to town, killing lovely. This sober, sturdy, and mature New Englander fell desperately in love with this wild slip of the pueblos. He married