Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/745

Rh, that "the eye sees only what it brings to itself the power to see"; and the majority of those who in recent years have visited Mexico would seem to have brought to their eyes the power of seeing little else than the picturesque side of things. And of such material there is no lack. In the first place, the country throughout is far more foreign to an American than any country of Europe, except that part of Europe in close proximity to its Asiatic border. Transport a person of tolerably good geographical information, without giving him any intimation as to where he was going, to almost any part of the great plateau of Mexico—outside of the larger cities—and he would at once conclude that he was either at Timbuctoo or some part of the "Holy Land." The majority of the houses are of adobe (mud), destitute of all coloration, unless dust-gray is a color, and one story in height-In Palestine, however, and also (according to report) in Timbuctoo, the roofs are "domed"; in Mexico they are flat. The soil is dry, the herbage, when there is any, coarse and somber, and the whole country singularly lacking in trees and verdure. In the fields of the better portions of the country, men may be seen plowing with a crooked stick, and raising water from wells or ditches into irrigating trenches, by exactly the same methods that are in use to-day as they were five thousand years ago or more upon the banks of the Nile. In the villages, women with nut-brown skins, black hair, and large black eyes, walk round in multitudinous folds of cotton fabrics, often colored, the face partially concealed, and gracefully bearing water-jars upon their shoulders—the old familiar Bible picture of our childhood over again, of Rebecca returning from the fountain.

Place a range of irregular, sharp, saw-tooth hills or mountains, upon whose sides neither grass nor shrub has apparently ever grown, in the distance; a cloudless sky and a blazing sun overhead; and in the foreground a few olive-trees, long lines of repellent cacti defining whatever of demarkation may be needed for fields or roadway, and a few donkeys, the type of all that is humble and forlorn—and the picture of village life upon the "plateau" of Mexico is complete.

Would any one recall the "Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt," it is not necessary to visit the galleries of Europe and study the works of the old masters, for here on the dusty plains of Mexico all the scenes and incidents of it are daily repeated: Mary upon a donkey, her head gracefully hooded with a blue rebozo, and carrying a young child enveloped on her bosom in her mantle; while Joseph, the husband, bearded and sun-sorchedsun-scorched [sic], with naked arms and legs, and sandals on his feet, walks ploddingly by her side, with one hand on the bridle, and, if the other does not grasp a staff, it is because of the scarcity of wood out of which to make one, or because the dull beast stands in constant need of the stimulus of a thong of twisted leather.

Madame Calderon de la Barca, the Scotch wife of one of the first Spanish ministers sent to Mexico after the achievement of her