Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/795

Rh games were frequently indulged in, with forfeits, but singing and dancing prevailed. Words were readily improvised to the simple melody, and all joined in the refrain. Dancers also sang at times, while the spectators assisted tile guitar orchestra with occasional clapping of hands. The favorite dances were the minuet, confined to the higher class, the waltz, bolero, and fandango, all executed with a grace for which Spaniards are well known, yet not free from features that savored of the indelicate.

Athletic sports were rare, except in connection with horseback-riding, and even aboriginal games and feats had fallen into neglect. Equally lacking was love for natural scenery and rustic life as manifested in our picnics and rambles, yet the fondness for flowers remained as strong;; as in aboriginal times, when it entered as the chief decoration for festive occasions, and as the choicest gift to the guest. Even now the market stalls appeared as bowers, and the fruit lay hidden in a fringe of green and blossoms, while from the dark; tresses of the passing señoras gleamed the opening buds in white and red.

Thus have passed two more centuries of viceregal sway in New Spain; so quietly they* passed as to cause not a ripple beyond its immediate vicinity. It is the unattractive period of the growing child, who has yet all his mark to make.

We still hear occasionally the din of battle, but not for conquest: merely the skirmish with rude tribes of the north, at bay against an encroaching civilization, upon which they retaliate in organized descents from shielding mountain fastnesses, or in flitting like lowering shadows along the outskirts of