Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-11-04
MEXICAN MUCHACHAS.
The Most Picturesque Type of Peasant
Girls to be Found Anywhere.

The Most Picturesque Type of Peasant
Girls to be Found Anywhere.
As rule, the most interesting OBJ
jects which the visitors will find arc the
girls of the hacienda, the Mexican
esque type of peasant can not be met
with on the hills of Normandy, or in
the wales of Switzerland. When the
numbering old diligencia comes clatter-
ing up laden with passengers, and the
driver shouts his CHEEKY ''Buenos diasH'
always the first to issue from the gray
walls in answer to his summons is the
muchacha. True to the fiber of curios-
ity which runs through the heart of
every feminine descendant of Eve, she is
anxious to see the arrivals. and is us
ready to coquette with any who may in
terest her as was our early ancestress
with the serpent. Without her the
picture would be incomplete: There
are the fiocks and herds of Father Abra-
ham, forked sticks turning up the soil
like the plows of the early Egyptians,
the .threshing floor of King David s
day. spinning Penelopes and water-car-
rying Rebeccas, and women making I'M
leavencd bread outside their doors, pre-
cisely as their sisters do on the Nile, the
Ganges and the Euphrates.
Whatever may be her age, this
muchaca is but grown-up child fully
developed, physically, when ten years
old), simple, picturesque and content
ed Though she never saw a bonnet,
her face is never freckled, and her feet
are very small though never manacled
by shoes or stockings; her limbs are in
variably well rounded. her bust is SUI
perb and she carries herself with inev-
liable grace which comes from proper
proportions and can never be acquired
without that primary essential. A lean
limbed, big-footed, slab-sided girl, or
one who is Il mountain of superfluous
fat may undergo years of careful train
ing as to gait and attitude. and yet
move like a giraffe; while Venus or a
Juno could scarcely be made ungrace-
full under any circumstances.
The muchacha's name is probably Do
1ores, Refugio. Guadalupe or Antonio.
Her nut-brown skin is soft as velvet.
having never been roughened by soap,
powder or cosmetics; and het jetty hair.
tied at the ends with a bit of bright-hued
RIBBON, hangs Denlnu ner pare shoulders
in two long braids except when she
talks (Which, like others of her sex, is
whenever she has opportunity, when
invariably she filings her hair forward
upon her breast and fingers the ribbons
which confine it. 1t is not banged over
the eyes like poodle's, nor erimped
like an Ethiopian's, but parted
straight through the middle, is
glossy as a ravens wing and black as
the za6atche of her native hills. The
tickle freaks of fashion make no change
in her dress, which is always the same
one short skirt and loose chemise,
the latter generally embroidered little
about the shoulders, leaving naked her
| symmetrical arms-and, in fact, most
of her person to the waist She is en-
tirely unconscious of want of further
clothing, and the utmost ''smarting
up she ever INDUCES in is to add a
string of red beads, brass bracelet or
| two, and to hang a pair of enormous
silver hoops in her ears and a rosary at
! her belt. For church wear and other
! extraordinary occasions she has blue
or black reboso-the national cotton
! winch, with one careless
toss, she twists tightly over head and
/ shoulders. Whether she be the child OF
j a peon, the daughter of house-servant
| or even the heiress of small farmer,
| the muchacha is always the same, a
product peculiar to rural Mexico-at-