Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/220

214 Church herself, are treated with equal contempt. A few days since, the remains of the patriot General Doblado, were exhumed at Guanajuato, and laid in state in the College building in great pomp, before being taken to Mexico to be interred in the Pantheon, as the Nation's honored dead. He had aided in carrying out the orders for the secularization of the real estate of the Church, and of course was excommunicated. The Church refused to allow his remains to lie in the Cathedral or any of the minor Church buildings, but the people attended the ceremonies all the same, and the funeral cortege, as it moved through the streets on its way to Mexico, presented a spectacle impressive and suggestive to the last degree.

There was not much else to see in Salamanca, and we drove on towards Celaya, through a valley at least twenty miles broad, and almost an unbroken corn-field. In one field we counted thirty-four ploughs drawn by oxen, at work at once, and in another, quite as many. We saw many orange-orchards around the little villages, and at one hacienda a very extensive olive plantation in full bearing. The soil is in many places six to ten feet in depth, clear black loam like that of the prairies, and exceedingly rich.

It is singular how little wild game you see here. After leaving Santa Anna Acatlan, near Seyula for the south-west of Guadalajara, we saw nothing in that line save a few sand-hill cranes, pied cranes, and two species of doves—the common "mourning dove" or "turtle dove" of the West, and a little fellow with mottled silver-gray plumage, and pink and yellow under the wings like a "yellow-hammer"—a very pretty creature. It is true that the inhabitants can occasionally indulge in