Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/17

Rh "That seems most wonderful!" I exclaimed, rather dubiously.

It is not more wonderful than thousands of other places in Mexico he replied. "In the State of Chihuahua is a Laguna, in which the water is as clear as crystal. When the Americans who were superintending the work on the railway found it, they decided to have a nice bath. It had been many days since they had seen any more water than would quench their thirst—in coffee of course.

Accordingly, some dozen or more doffed their clothing and went in.

Their pleasure was short-lived, for their bodies began to burn and smart, and they came out looking like scalding pigs.

The water is strongly alkaline; the fish in the lake are said to be white, even to their eyes; they are unfit to eat.

I give his stories for what they are worth; I did not investigate to prove their truth.

"We do not think much of the people who come here to write us up," the conductor said one day, "for they never tell the truth.

One woman who came down here to make herself famous pressed me one day for a story. I told her that out in the country the natives roasted whole hogs, heads and all, without cleaning, and so served them on the table. She jotted it down as a rare item."

"If you tell strangers untruths about your own land can you complain, then, that the same strangers misrepresent it?" asked my little mother, quietly.

The conductor flushed, and said he had not thought of it in that light before.

While yet a day's travel distant from the city of Mexico, tomatoes and strawberries were procurable. It was January. The venders were quite up to the tricks of the hucksters in the States.

In a small basket they place cabbage leaves and two or three pebbles to give weight; then the top is covered with strawberries so deftly that even the smartest purchaser thinks he is getting a bargain for twenty-five cents.

At larger towns a change for the better was noticeable in the clothing of the people.

The most fashionable dress for the Mexican Indian was white muslin panteloons, twice as wide as those worn by the dudes last summer;