Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/512

504 There are many marble-workers here, and along the river that drains the city are no less than fourteen cotton factories, a woollen, a paper, and a match factory. The cotton and woollen cloths manufactured here, though generally of coarse quality, find a ready market throughout Mexico. Railroads, have not disturbed this sleepy, sanctimonious old city greatly yet, but in two or three years it will wake up a little. There is but one newspaper here, and no news. The business is mainly in the hands of French and Germans, who jealously regard the incoming Americans, and who will have cause for that feeling in a few years, when the coming railroads shall pass through.

In the State college there is a fine library of old books, principally ecclesiastical, and very valuable ones pertaining to the history of Mexico. There are said to be some veritable paintings by Rubens and Murillo in a private collection in the city. As resorts, morning or afternoon, the two paseos, the Paseo Nuevo and the Paseo Viejo—the new and the old walk—are delightful. Near the former are the sulphur baths of San Pedro, which are very refreshing and medicinal, and close by is the old convent of San Xavier, partially destroyed during the French invasion.

The bull-ring is in this part of the city, and is in use every Sunday; one day it was for the benefit of a small church, and the next Sabbath it was in honor of the feast of "the sacred blood of Jesus." The markets are long, low, shingled sheds, covering platforms of stone raised about two feet above the pavement, where the women and men squat with small specimens of all the vegetables grown in Mexico. Prices are very low: cabbages, six cents per head; onions, seven for a tlaco, a cent and a half; radishes, six for the same amount; eggs, three for a medio, six cents; frijoles, four cents per quart; beef, six to eight cents per pound; crockery,—an ordinary pan, three cents; a jar, a tlaco; a ten-gallon jar, from twenty-five to thirty-seven cents, etc. In the shops, articles of domestic manufacture are equally cheap. I bought a lariat for two reales, while the metates, the great flat-faced stones upon which the corn is ground, cost only from four to eight reales, and the rolling-pins