ours.
This being so, it is small cause for surprise to find near us, united to portions of our southern country by ties of common origin, customs, and language, a land almost unknown, much misunderstood, and wholly misrepresented. A country picturesque beyond description, and beautiful beyond belief; with traditions of the past to interest the antiquarian, and problems of the future to occupy the progressionist; with the fascinations of a strange tongue and a strange people, and with that indefinable charm which those indolent, lotos-eating lands exercise always over the sterner and colder nature of the north-man,—Mexico lies among her mountains, almost as far removed from human ken as the Enchanted Beauty before the Prince kissed her sleeping eyes.
Separated from Texas at El Paso only by the narrow waters of the Rio Grande, one enters Mexico with no more consciousness of change than in passing from one portion of a frontier town to another. Until within a few years the passage was made by means of a primitive rope ferry, with a delicious slowness and uncertainty which were partial preparation for the strangeness beyond. Some taint (or shall we call it tonic?) of Bohemianism there is in most healthy human natures, which creates delight in the unconventional, and makes the pulse throb with excitement at the first escape from routine. At the entrance to a new world, one craves something beyond the practical methods of commonplace, but to-day the triteness of a hackneyed civilization follows one to the very threshold. A jingling little tramway crosses a wooden bridge, and the traveller steps into the streets of El Paso del Norte with the straws and dust of a familiar world still clinging to him. But in a moment it is as if a magician's wand had been raised. He left on the other side of the river the busy, bustling American settlement, thriving but ugly; he enters upon enchantment here. A soft, caressing air woos like mild breath of welcome after the sharpness of a northern February; linnets sing deliciously to the morning; willow withes are turning yellow by the narrow ditches of clear water. Through the brown, dusty plains stretch winding lanes, outlined by high walls of dried mud, behind which shine the rosy glow of peach blooms, or scarlet-tipped hedges of cactus spikes. Low, flat-roofed, adobe houses fit into the blank wall, relieved occasionally by a heavily barred door, or stand in the midst of bare, dry fields, as cheerless and desolate as they. On each side, shallow streams, brought from the hills or from hidden springs, run in sluiceways which at intervals cross the roadway. Here and there a carpet of delicate green, the drooping grace of a plantation of young cottonwoods, or the checkered squares of a thriving market garden show where the precious water has been freely used; for here, as elsewhere, the most barren tract blossoms at touch of moisture. The field laborers are usually dressed in white cotton, fashioned into short trousers and sleeveless shirts. The women move shyly, covered to the eyes in the long blue scarf, or reboso, which is part of the national costume. Half-naked children, with dark skins and glorious eyes, play about grated door-yards, which open into small patios, or courtyards, beyond, bright sometimes with shrubs and flowers. The men, with wide-rimmed sombrero and gay zarape, lounge or work or walk about with a grave, dark-eyed imperturbability which contrasts strangely with the inquiring vivacity of their class at home. The blank white walls of the old cathedral, with its broken belfry of adobe, rise across the fields; down one narrow lane comes a caravan of enormous covered wagons, each drawn by sixteen mules in bright trappings, and driven by swarth muleteers in costumes that seem borrowed from Carmen. Around another corner dashes a mounted caballero, sitting his small but fiery horse as if the two made but a single creature full of superb motion. The man wears a broad sombrero, brilliant with silver braid; his short, loose velvet jacket is bright with rows of silver buttons, as are also the wide velvet trousers which lose themselves in stirrups of fringed leather. The animal is resplendent in silver mounted harness, with embroidered saddle heavy with inlaid work; across his neck is thrown a folded blanket of scarlet wool; over his flanks falls a long fleece of silky black fur. And the Centaur-like grace of steed and rider flashes before one's delighted eyes, to disappear as mysteriously again behind the jealous hedges.
Under a mesquite-bush by the wayside one may see an Indian woman scouring a tall earthen jar, preparatory to swinging it, fresh filled from the well, upon her shoulder in the old biblical fashion; under another, a couple of wrinkled crones are washing clothes in a shallow ditch, and spreading the wet pieces upon the cactus plants to dry. Now and again a drowsy little tienda shows one or two unhurried customers at its narrow counter; or a corner cantine has its inevitable handful of quiet pulque-drinkers; or a silent brown group, their glowing eyes alone showing trace of excitement, gathers around a pair of fighting cocks. The sky above is as blue as Colorado; the air is pure and sweet, with the softness of a late May day; and between you and the matter-of-fact, work-a-day world you left a few hours ago, are a thousand miles of distance and a lifetime of difference.
Every step into the new territory to the southward deepens the impression which this first glimpse at people and country makes upon one. The table-lands, separated by long, parallel mountain chains, now approaching and now receding, are full of infinite variety. Aside from the loveliness of the heights themselves, which, rich in mineral dyes and exquisite in outline, make a fresh beauty for eager eyes at each opening of the landscape, a hundred forms of interest and novelty offer a constant series of surprises. It may be a hacienda,—one of those enormous properties covering square miles of country, divided into villages and hamlets, rich in corrals and sheepfolds, watered by streams, luxuriant in gardens and fields of springing wheat. Across the plains, mounted shepherds drive flocks of white silken-fleeced goats and immense droves of cattle; long lines of trees follow the curves of the water-courses; the dome of a church rises amid the foliage; groups of burros and horses follow their Indian keepers through the fields; and the manifold industries belonging to a great and rich estate gather about the central courtyard, with its hollow square surrounded by massive stone buildings. Or it is a break in the hills, through which one looks down into some exquisite valley, deep with purple shadow, faintly luminous with dreamy light, and a glint of water shooting like a silver arrow through the pale green foliage. Or it is a silent city far away on the horizon, its domes and towers tinted in soft shades of pink and blue and warm amber; its tiled roofs flashing; its low gray walls, with masses of drooping trees behind, barely rising from the white level of the plain, like an oasis in the desert. Or it is a forest of cactus stretching for miles in every form of contortion known to this reptile of the vegetable world; or a waste of Yucca palms, each stem tipped by a Hercules club, four feet in height, of waxen lilies; or a plain of unfamiliar flowers, gorgeous but scentless, stretching like a Persian rug to the base of the wonderful heights beyond. Always a sudden change, and each change as splendid as the one before which seemed perfection.
With unceasing difference of detail in color and outline, but the same general peculiarities, these scenes repeat themselves, until the approach to Chihuahua across the wide plain brings us near the first distinctively Mexican city. It lies below the deep purple mountains in the distance; the
two tall campanile of the cathedral dominating the landscape, and the low, flat-roofed houses lying upon the terra-cotta surface of the valley with a most Oriental effect. Indeed, every thing about the spot is distinctly Eastern. Across the plain, as one rides from the station to the town, the scrapes of the horsemen recall the burnous of the Arab. So does the magnificent horsemanship, as the riders fly over the open country. Inside the city streets, long colonnades of rude Moorish arches outside the houses, offer grateful shelter from the mid-day sun; the outer walls are frescoed in bright blue, yellow, or red; there is a mosque-life effect about the great central domes of the churches. Broad stone seats with high backs, like those in Alma-Tadema's pictures, line the principal streets under soft shadows of fanlike trees; clumps of Mexican aloe and prickly cactus hedge the roadways. There is a barbaric richness of ornamentation about the façade of the principal church, carved in solid stone by native artists from native designs; but it loses somewhat, upon closer inspection, from its crude conception of art. It is, however, greatly superior to the more tawdry and more insincere
decoration of machine-turned woods, to which we are unfortunately too well used in church architecture at home. From the flat roof, a beautiful prospect opens on all sides. A fine row of gray stone arches marks the path of the aqueduct built more than two hundred years ago to convey water from the mountains beyond. A bird's-eye view into the inner portion of the adobe houses near gave an added touch of strange interest to