Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/44

 40 A stumpy old man brings a bouquet of roses, common blush and white, for which we pay two reals, or twenty-five cents, and that is as much again as he expected. In this we count thirty-eight large double roses in blossom, with buds many. Had that been bought for a New York table on this New-year's-day, it would have cost nearer ten dollars.

The country people are coming to town; for it is somebody's feast-day, and the railroad opening too. This modern secular and ancient ecclesiastical holiday, joined together, is too much for the Aztec. So he has donned his spotless white, and she her spotless gray; for the female human bird, like the feathered biped, is here less gorgeously arrayed than its male. Off they tramp to the city. His shirt, plaited and polished before and behind, depends over like-lustrous trowsers, well buttoned on the side with tinkling bell-buttons that rattle, if they do not ring, to the music of his going. Some are on horseback. Two trotting near the track get frightened at the cars, and back their steeds from the path. A broad ditch is behind the narrow way, and one of the horses plunges therein and tips his clean rider over into the black mush. A loud laugh is all the consolation he gets for the splash and its ruin of his holiday costume.

Medillin is a town of sheds, roofed with thatch, and a few houses of brick or wood, with broad arcades for drinking, dancing, and gambling. The season not being on, none of these were going on, except a breakfast or two, which were excellent. It certainly seemed out of place to wander round that open garden, full of roses and oranges and all manner of hot-house plants, on this New-year's morning, and to sit in the open hall, eating as delightful breakfast as my "International Moral Science Association" brother of Ireland ever got up at somebody else's expense. But the cool hall was a pleasant refuge from the heat, and we found the watering-place refreshing in January. A river, used for bathing, makes it the favorite resort of Vera Cruzians. Cortez frequented it, and built a chapel there. He seems to have done that everywhere; piety and impiety being nearly equal in him.