Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/28

4 miserable huts built of canes, mud, and rushes, they are helpless and indolent; and there is at present little prospect of their condition improving.

Male and female léperos—creatures in rag's and tatters, who bandage their limbs to counterfeit disease—block up the principal streets of the towns and cities, incessantly imploring the charity of the passing stranger. The country highways and mountain paths, and even the thoroughfares adjoining the capital, are so infested with troops of mounted ladrones (robbers), that it is unsafe to travel, unless armed to the teeth: the government mails and public vehicles are frequently stopped and plundered by them.

The superior grades of the Mexican people are descended from the Spaniards who settled in the country before the revolution the rest are half-castes and native Indians. The men are for the most part short in stature, and deficient in muscular power; and their-minds are as indolent and enervated as their bodies.

The women have often agreeable, though somewhat flat features, and small hands and feet their hair either falls in long ringlets to the waist, or is gathered up into numerous