Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/198

192 boxes, for my inspection. I gave him fifty cents for his trouble, not feeling able to buy, and he went off protesting that I was a Republican Prince and a Cabellero grande.

I wanted a pair of boots and could find none in the shops to fit me. Seeing a boot-peddler in the crowd I called him up, and looked at a pair with short legs faced with buff, and soles fancifully shaped and fastened with small metalic nails; they were made at Leon, he told me.

"Too small; I wear number eight!"

He passed his hand carefully over my foot and without another question thanked me, bowed low, and hurried off. When I got back to the house and entered my room, a servant brought me a pair the exact counterpart of those I had looked at, except in size, saying that the owner was in the ante-room. I tried them on, and found them the nicest fit I had ever seen; if they had been made for me in New York they would not have fitted me half so well.

"How much?" I asked of the servant.

"Four dollars Señor!"

"Tell him I will give him three dollars and a half!"

He came back in a minute: "Esta bien, Señor!" He would have taken three dollars, had I offered it, but they were cheap at twice or three times the money, according to our American ideas. How he found out who I was and where to find me, is a mystery I am unable to explain.

The scenes in the market-place or plaza of Guanajuato are beyond description. The poor people of this great mining district cannot afford to waste anything, and they literally eat up an entire animal "from the tip of