Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/356

348 and entrails, with blood dripping from them, and skulls with horns attached and glaring eyeballs protruding from livid sockets.

One morning, in a walk in the suburbs, I discovered a milk factory, where there was no possible chance for adulteration. In a square containing a fountain was a small herd of cows; about each cow was a crowd of serving-women; and a man presided at the source of supply. A line was fastened to the cow's hind legs, binding her tail to them also, and then passed over her back to her horns, while triced up to her shoulders was a lusty calf. It was a beautiful arrangement; the cow could not kick nor wag her tail, and the calf could not frisk about, nor put his foot in the milk-pail,—for two reasons: first, because he was tied; second, because there was not any pail. The man milked with one hand into a pint cup he held in the other, and which, as fast as it was filled, he emptied into the cups and pitchers of the waiting servants. And they were a clamorous crowd, importuning him to fill their vessels and let them be gone. "Don Felipe, for the love of God give me a medio's worth of milk." "For the sake of the Virgin, a tlaco's worth," etc.

Here, thought I, there is no chance for cheating; here is honesty and pure milk, without water and without chalk, and my heart warmed towards Don Felipe and the promiscuous crowd of maid-servants, squatted around him and his cow in the dirt. These people, thought I, are born of dirty, but honest parents. But my landlady told me that the servants conspire with the man with the cow, and put water in the pitcher, and then divide with the honest expresser of the lacteal fluid, who, by milking fast and furious, creates a froth in the pitcher, not so much desired by her as milk. But did ever landlady and maid-servant exist together without a feud? I choose to believe that there dwells somewhere on this wide earth an honest milkman, and have implicit faith in Don Felipe and his cow.