Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/657

Rh leaped over the intervening waste of country and spread itself over this pleasant valley.

On the morning of June 20th, as I was about taking train for Guaymas, I found the station full of ladies and gentlemen, who had come to greet the "divine Peralta," the famous prima-donna of Mexico. Los Musicos, the musicians, were assembled in force, and the brightest and prettiest of señoritas flitted gayly about, shielding their sweet faces and bright eyes from the too ardent rays of el sol with their fans, while the air was ringed and streaked with the smoke of a hundred cigarros. A sprightly Mexicano was circulating printed slips containing a soneto to the gifted singer, S'ra Angela Peralta de Castera, and everybody was on the tiptoe of expectation.

To the great disappointment of the unsophisticated beauties of Hermosillo, Peralta did not arrive; and the episode I had witnessed would have faded away, had I not read, in a paper of three months later, that the "Nightingale of Mexico," with several members of her troupe, had died of yellow-fever at Mazatlan. Poor Peralta! I doubt not that the gentle dames of Sonora are grieving over their sister's demise to this day; though they had cause to sorrow over their own ravaged households. I wonder if any of those graceful girls who regarded el Americano wonderingly through their grated windows, or if any of those airy young men who so politely did the honors of their city, have fallen victims to the plague. I hope not, though vague report leads me to fear that some were taken away.

I remember with what gracious courtesy one of these lovely daughters of Hermosillo, an heiress in her own right to a beautiful estate and a deceased parent's horde of pesos, gave us permission to enter the patio of her dwelling, and with what evident pleasure she directed us to the blossoming gardens, where date palms and plantains mingled their leaves, and where the orange and fig trees were full of cooing doves and warbling songsters. The peace and delights of this place suggested that it might not be amiss to cast one's lines in it for good and all; and we did not wonder that some of our countrymen had been made captives by the gentle Mexicanas, who are said to lend a willing