Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/504

496 a cross,—a black, wooden cross,—stuck up in memory of a man but recently killed. The frequency of these crosses rather dashes one's desire to penetrate new regions in this land of insecurity;—

For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath Poured forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife. Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath; And grove and glen with thousand such are rife, Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life."

From the province of Tlascala, in the middle of the sixteenth century, was taken the territory set apart for Puebla, and the city founded there, in 1532, became subsequently more famous than the original capital of the plucky little republic. The city of Puebla, to which I made my next move, contains more churches and convents to the square mile than any other town on this continent,—more places of worship, according to its population, even than Brooklyn. In Mexico City every vista of every street is terminated by a hill or mountain, blue and hazy in the distance, perhaps, but still there, to remind one of the works of nature while contemplating the works of man; in Puebla every vista is cut short by a church, or chapel, or some religious edifice. You are confronted at every turn by men begging for the Church, beggars with flaunting rags and tin cash-boxes, which they display before your eyes, and, what is worse, under your noses. Priests, wrapped in great black cloaks, form a goodly proportion of the pedestrians; from some door of every block issues the sound of a bell calling to prayer, and kneeling crowds everywhere pay homage to the Virgin; hat in hand, the true believer passes through the streets with head