Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/9

Rh, a botanic garden, and the legislative chambers. This palace occupies a whole side of the square. The Ayuntamiento (Municipality) and the Postal de las flores, an immense market, form the third side. The Parian, a market similar to the preceding, completes the fourth. Thus the legislative and executive power, the board of works, commerce all the departments of the Mexican government, in short, are in one building, and seem as if grouped together under the shadow of the church. The people are there also; for the streets of St. Domingo, of St. Francisco, of Tacuba, of Monnaie, of Monterilla, all arteries of the great city, pour into the Plaza Mayor a flood of human beings, which is always changing, and ever in motion, and you have only to mix in this crowd for a few moments to get acquainted with Mexican life in all its diversified phases of vice and virtue, of splendor and misery.

When the hour of the Angelus approaches especially, horsemen, foot-passengers, and carriages are packed together in disorderly confusion, and gold, silk, and rags, mingled here and there, give to the crowd a grotesque and startling appearance. The Indians are returning to their villages, the populace to the suburbs. The ranchero makes his horse prance and curvet in the midst of the passengers, who are in no hurry to get out of his way; the aquador (water-carrier), whose day's work is over, crosses the square, bending under the weight of his chockocol of porous earthenware; the officer is bending his steps to the coffee-houses or gambling-tables, where he intends to spend the evening; the non-commissioned officer clears the way for himself with a vine-tree-staff, which he carries in his hand as a badge of his rank. The red petticoat of the townswoman is in glaring contrast with the saya and