Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/338

330 In going through this market one Sunday morning, I jotted down the different varieties of fruits and vegetables, as I saw them, on the margin of a newspaper: and here is the list, transcribed as it ran there. First, after passing the dealers in fried meats, who are constantly dishing out scraps of pork and shreds of beef sizzling in fat to dirty leperos in sombreros and sarapes, stationed at the gate, you encounter the fruit stalls and vegetable stands. There are limes, fragrant as any grown in West Indian gardens, but without their plumpness and flavor; they perfume the air in the immediate vicinity, notwithstanding the sewage odors and the flaunting of vile garments that smell to heaven; close by are pears,—here are two zones brought close together,—but these pears are not equal to those of northern climates; cherries peculiar to the country, shaddocks, mangos, bananas, plantains, oranges,—all from the tierras calientes, or hot lands, whence also come the coco-nuts and pine-apples that lie in heaps on the pavement; these last are very dear, approaching prices asked in New York, owing to the great expense of transportation over two hundred miles of railroad; babies—not from the tierras calientes—who keep decidedly cool and comfortable, whether lying kicking on their mother's mats or peering from the rebosos in which they are confined to their mothers' backs; melons, peaches, wooden bowls, buckets, mats, babies; poultry, fish, babies; lettuce, babies, crockery, tomatoes, peppers, babies, beans, radishes, potatoes, babies without a rag on them; onions, leeks, cabbages, corn, babies with nothing on them but rags; peas, carrots, beets, squashes, artichokes, babies lean and emaciated; birds, children, pumpkin-seeds, babies fat as a post-office contract; Indians, with great coops of chickens on their backs, leading babies by the hand; donkeys, with great panniers of vegetables or charcoal, with babies as crowning curiosities; crockery venders with huge crates of earthen jars and pots. In fact, there are here the products of every zone and clime, and all the productions of mother earth.

It is with pleasure that one turns from this heterogeneous assemblage of the natural and artificial products of Mexico,—from