Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/58

50 the power of the Church has been so curtailed as in Mexico—without observing the feast-days and the carnival. This latter celebration, thanks to the readily accepted invitation of the United States Consul, I had an excellent opportunity for witnessing.

Four days were devoted to the carnival, and five nights to the balls which form a part of it. Sunday, the 27th of February, was properly the day of opening, though the ball of Saturday night was a brilliant affair. The first indications of the carnival on Sunday morning were from a band of Indians, who personated the wild men of the country in songs and dances, and exhibited for the amusement of themselves and spectators the costumes of their ancestors. These were of the lower classes, who had not attended the ball of the previous night. Soon the streets were alive with people, after the morning mass, and the fun commenced. Though fun-loving and innocent in their amusements, these people have not the fertility of invention necessary to secure artistic effect, or to more than broadly burlesque the customs of their own country. Their best groups were the Indians, who excelled in dancing, and the estudiantes, or bands of Spanish students, who went about in costume, singing songs of their own composition.

Let one day in my description suffice as a specimen of all the rest, and let that day be Sunday because everybody was fresh, excited, and animated. After the Indians had passed, and a great crowd of the ordinary "tag-rag and bobtail" of such processions, came the estudiantes, a picturesque band, happy, careless, tuneful. Down the street they came, around the corner of the Plaza, in sight of the great cathedral, and halted opposite the consulate. At a signal from their leader, they burst forth into wild, sweet melody, from guitars thrummed by practised hands, flutes, violins, and violoncellos. They handed us some printed songs, and we saw that they were the work of some of Merida's sons,—for they have poets here of no mean rank. Their music was lively and pleasing, and they were so well drilled as to render all their pieces most effectively; the impression left as they passed on was as though one had listened to an opera,