Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/97

Rh Each side of the street is filled with tents. In the center and along the houses are women squatted on the ground nursing their babies and selling their wares, which consist of everything ugly. Some build little charcoal fires, above it suspend a flat pan, and on it fry some sort of horrible cakes and red pepper, which are sold to the gamblers. At the foot of a large tree sat an ugly, dirty woman. From a big earthen jar by her side she dealt out pulque to the thirsty people; the jar was replenished repeatedly from filled pig skins. At another place tomatoes and salad were laid out in little piles on the ground. A little naked babe lay asleep on a piece of matting, and a woman was busy at the head of another—not reading her bumps, but taking the living off the living—and she did not have to hunt hard either. Similar scenes repeated themselves until one longed for something new.

The restaurants were numerous. A piece of matting spread on the ground constituted the tables, with the exception of three old wrecks that could hardly stand. Cups of all shapes, but none whole, lay claim to being the only dishes in sight. Large clay jars, tin boilers, etc., were the coffee urns.

Among all the mob that gathers here, a fight is an unheard-of thing. "It is old California repeated," said Joaquin Miller, "with the rough people left out." Rough, in a certain sense, they are, and ignorant, yet far surpassing the same class of people in the States; they possess a never-failing kindness and gentleness for one another; the police carried one woman who was paralyzed from pulque as tenderly as if she were their mother, while a sympathizing crowd followed; two peons supported between them a pulque victim, who was so happy that his spirits found vent in trying to sing a hiccough song. Another peon, only half sober, got his drunken companion on his back and trudged off, in a wavering manner, for his home.

In the tents along the street a second class of people gamble. Some tables have painted on them three faces—a red one, with a white and green one on either side—on which the men gamble. Musicians with string instruments furnish pleasing airs, and women in picturesque costumes do the singing and dancing. The most