Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/183

Rh conductors on each car; one sells the tickets, the other collects them.

When the line was first opened an enterprising stock-holder bought up all the hearses in the city and had funeral cars made. The coffin is laid on one draped car; white for young and black for old, and the mourners and friends follow in street cars hired for the purpose. A stylish funeral will have a dozen or more cars, the windows of which are hung with white crepe, and the doors with black; the drivers and conductors appear in black suits and high, silk hats; the horses are draped, and have black and white plumes on their heads. The cost of a funeral ranges from $20 to $1500. A stylish one is a beautiful sight; the poor, by making application to the police, are given the funeral car and passage for two persons free; the low and poverty-stricken class also hire the coffins, and when they reach the cemetery the corpse is taken out, wrapped in a serape and consigned to a hired grave—that is, they buy the grave for five years, at the end of which time the bones are lifted and thrown in some corner, exposed to the gaze of the public, in order to make room for new-comers; and the tombstones—then useless—are laid in one heap by the gate. The people are no respecters of human bones; Americans always want to go back to the States to die.

Street car drivers, of which there are two on each car, are compelled by law to blow a horn at every crossing to warn pedestrians of their coming; the horns are similar, in tone and shape, to those used by fish peddlers in the States. Drivers of every kind of vehicles use the long lash whip of plaited leather exclusively, and they ply them quite vigorously on their animals; they also urge them to faster speed by a sound similar to that which the villain on the stage makes as he creeps upon intended victims when asleep, with his finger on his lips. It sounds like a whip lash cutting through the air.

The carts in use here are of the most ancient shape two large, wooden wheels support a big square box. One mule is hitched next to the wagon, and three abreast in front of that, and one still ahead; the harness and one still ahead; the harness baffles description. Drivers very seldom ride, but trot along beside their team with rope lines in their hands;