Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/88

86 large shade trees. They form some of the many and most beautiful drives in Mexico; and on Sunday the paseos are filled with crowds of ladies and gentlemen on horseback. It is also one of the favorite places for racing, and any one who is fond of fine riding will have a chance to see it here. Two young fellows took from off the horses the saddles and bridles, then, removing their coats and hats, they rode a mile race on the bare horses. Large bets were made on it, and every one enjoyed the exhibition.

In the afternoon we turned our boat toward the city, followed by a boat containing a family. The father and largest son were doing the poling, and the mother was bathing her babes. She rubbed them with soap, and then, leaning over the edge of the boat, doused them up and down in the water. After she had finished and dressed them in the clothes which had in the meanwhile been drying in the boat, she washed her face and hair, combed it with a scrub-brush, and let it hang loose over her back to dry on the way to town. When we repassed the wash-house encountered going up, we were surprised to see it nearly deserted and the few remaining ones donning their clean linen, getting into their canoes and paddling around the canal. When we reached Santa Anita, a village of straw mansions, we found they were celebrating an annual feast-day, and that the town was not only crowded with guests, but La Viga was almost impassable for boats. On this special day it is the custom for every body to wear wreaths of poppies. The flower-women, seated in the middle of the street, were selling them as fast as they could hand them out.

From a stand a brass band was sending forth its lovely strains, and beneath were the people dancing. They have no square dances or waltzes, but the dance is similar to an Irish reel—without touching one another, and merely balancing back, forth and sideways. Pulque was flowing as freely as Niagara Falls, and for the first time we realized what "dead drunk" meant. One woman was overcome, and had been drawn out of, into which she had fallen. She lay on the bank, wet, muddy, covered with flies, face down on the earth, with no more life than a corpse. She was really paralyzed.

After we tired of watching them we continued our