Picturesque Mexico [pp. 307-318]

PICTURESQUE MEXICO.
choly-eyed natives gather by the wayside to offer you wealth of
beautiful, unfamiliar fruit and flowers.
It is difficult to understand why artists, who have usually
such a quick eye for opportunity, have made the mistake of overlooking the treasures awaiting themrn here. The glow of local
coloring, the strange Oriental architecture, the barbaric splendor
of the churches, and the wonderfully effective costumes would
be mines of wealth to those capable of working them. So would
be the passing trains of shaggy burros, the plazas, the fountains,
the merchants crying their wares under the low arches of the
Portales, the great stone seats which belong to every part of the
country. The long windows, with carved stone balconies and
bright awnings, brighter still at evening with their groups of
dark-eyed sefioritas; the beauty of inner courts flashing through
the dark setting of the archways; the trumpeters blowing their
long silver bugle-calls outside the palace gates as the refrain of
each passing hour; the Teocali of the Aztecs, with their summits
still strewn with broken relics from the altars of the gods; the
wayside shrines; the mingled reminiscence of Morocco and the
Holy Land; the superb abundance of flowers-each goes to add
its soupqon of novelty to the delightful whole we call Mexico,
and all await their interpreter.
The courtesy of the people is charming beyond expression.
To the slightest gesture of greeting lowest as well as highest
respond with a swift, flashing smile which illumines the dark
visage like a gleam of heart-sunshine. The fine teeth and lustrous, shining eyes transform faces that would otherwise seem
too deeply tinged with sadness. And the soft, lingering sweetness of the Spanish tongue, with its courtly phrase and delicate
flattery, lulls with its musical cadence, until one believes in the
story of the disguised princess whose lips dropped pearls and
diamonds with each word.
It would be impossible to close the most trivial sketch of
picturesque Mexico without some word of reference to the most
picturesque figure it has known in modern times. At every new
step into the country one is struck by the idiosyncrasies which
the grafting of so-called'republicanism upon the old monarchical
system has produced. The struggle of democratic measures
with caste prejudice and predilection produces results fairly
puzzling to the observer. Indeed, it is hardly right to speak of
republicanism. Under this fair title they have succeeded in
grafting the worst form of military despotism upon the old root
3I6
[June,