Travels in the United States, etc.,: during 1849 and 1850./ By the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley.

FRI-SLES 18
and the spaces between the supporting pillars are gayly filled with
a vast variety of stalls, where you may buy little trays, playthings,
dazzling sarapes of all colors, flowing rebosos, mangas, tortillas ad
libittmn, tilmas (Indian cloaks), dulces (sweetmeats), pictures, little
figures of saints, prints, shoes, and many other miscellaneous articles.
The fruit-sellers exhibit their tempting piles of zapotes, cocoa
nuts, and all sorts of fruit, from the Tierra Caliente, at the
corners, and they display too an immense number of glasses and
cups filled with cool and refreshing beverages to arrest the steps
of the passer-by, heated, perhaps, by walking in the sun, before he
came under those delicious places of refuge from sun, wind, or
rain; the first the most frequently making those portales desirable
promenades. As I have seen them do at Naples, in the busy and
stirring Strada Toledo, so in Mexico do the various tradesmen
constantly pursue their occupation in the open air-that is to say,
open here-save and except the umbrageous shelter of the covered
porticoes. Of course, here are to be seen innumerable rebosos and
sarapes, kaleidoscopically diversified in both patterns and colors;
a marvelous and almost endless variety of both, and also in the
manner of draping them about the person. Look at that little
urchin of perhaps six summers, with about a mile of glittering
sarape wound around him, like a long, huge shining snake wreathimg about his small person; not, however, having caught that
strutting little six-year-old in its gleaming coils, but being scornfully clutched and grasped and scotched (not killed-for it looks
living in its spiral, serpentining grace-as living as the snake
wound round Laocoon, which is saying a very great deal!) and, in
short, tossed and thrown about at his will and pleasure; and how
he stalks, how he attitudinizes, how he haughtily paces along
(stepping like a young panther) with his splendid prey and prize;
how he gives the brilliant folds another proud toss over his shoulders-and methinks now he has chosen his fashion and mode and
manner of wearing the magical sarape, for ever and aye uncopied
and uncopiable. A Mexican and his sarape seem one and indivisible, like the ancient Centaurs and their horses-inseparable
and the same. The whole dress is very graceful; what a horror
is a swallow-tailed coat in comparison, and the crown of all the
hideousness of modern European dress-the tight black hat; how
frightful is it by the picturesque sombrero, with its delicate silver
cords and hanging tassels. They sometimes have the cord
fastened by some little silver wrought bird or animal, exquisitely
finished.
FRUIT-SELLERS.
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