Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/17

 Bucareli, the Paseo de la Viga, along the Calle de los Plateros and the Ale- meda. The last named—a park of about twelve acres, handsomely adorned with flowers, shrubs, large shade trees and statuary—is the resort of the fashionable world of Mexico for morning drive and equestrian exercise, and here may be seen some of the famous Mexican riding in all its native grace ‘and love of dis- play; for nowhere does the Mexican gentleman feel so proud as on his horse, with his splendid silver-mounted saddle and gaily ornamented serape. Ona fine morning, hundreds of horsemen are cur- veting along the romantic roads of the Alemeda, now half hidden among the foliage, disappearing behind the fount- ains and wheeling into sight again, all in apparent confusion, but yet owing to the perfect control of their animals, never coming in contact.

During the Empire the officers were particularly fond of airing their uniforms on the Alemeda, the Austrian and French trotting their heavy imported animals with the peculiar hard, jolting cavalry gait, always losing in contrast with the graceful horsemanship around them. When one of these foreigners (generally effeminate looking gentlemen, with pale faces and spectacles) went thumping by, the Mexicans would quietly make room without a smile; but doubtless these exhibitions of angular elbows, and un- gainly motions made fun enough in some more fitting place, where the rules of po- liteness would not be violated bya hearty laugh.

At no time since the days of its an- cient glory in the reigns of the Aztec kings, has the capital of Mexico con- tained so large a population as dur- ing the late Empire. The exhausting wars waged between the Liberal and Church factions had finally driven the wealthy proprietors towards the chief popular centres—the greater number gravitating to the city of Mexico; so that during 1864, there were near two hundred and fifty thousand people with- in the walls, seeking there the pro- tection to life and security to property guaranteed by the Imperial government against the raids of bands of robbers, whose motto was indiscriminate plunder on the highway, of friend and foe alike, and gravely claiming the rights of mili- tary prisoners when captured and exe- cuted for their crimes. Merchants and tradesmen who flocked to Mexico at this time, invited by the era of peace which it was believed the Empire would ensure to the distracted country, were surprised to find it the largest and rich- est city of the American tropics; and so far from realizing their ideal of adobe huts and mud-thatched sheds, as sug- gested by the rural architecture of tropical-American towns oftenest vis- ited by travelers, they entered a spa- cious, noble city, whose broad, level and cleanly thoroughfares, handsomely paved and lighted, were crowded with a dense, thriving population, the mart and commercial centre of all that part of the continent.

Nothing could be more erroneous than to picture the Mexican capital after the sea-coast towns. Seated high in the temperate regions of the interior, among the very clouds ; under the shad- dow of immense volcanoes clad with perpetual snows ; approached from all directions by dizzy mountain roads, whose bridges of solid masonry have from time immemorial defied the storms and torrents, and still compel the ad- miration of the traveler; its history, glowing with romance, and its great cathedral domes and massive towers of semi-Moorish architecture telling of its ancient grandeur, of doughty Spanish warriors, and the heroic deeds of Cortez and his mailed cavaliers; containing within herself all that the most exacting Sybarite could desire in the comforts and elegancies of refined modern life ; a climate delicious to a proverb; society peculiarly cosmopolitan, and embracinga