Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-06-06

ing on a. kind of a weary dog trot neither
looking to the right nor to the left; while
in the great fields they ply their tasks
like fiocks of locusts. About great build
ing operations they swarm like white
winged ants. To give an illustration:
the charcoal bearers transport their enor-
nous loads on their backs from the
mountains 30 to 40 miles away for two
reals or less than twenty-five cents of
our money, and the water carriers tote
about twenty gallons of water from two
| to two and a-half miles for I'm centayo or
one cent per trip. Talk about the Ameri-
can flag for such people. AS for the
merchants and street vendors Of the City
of Mexico, who are thicker or more nu-
merous than the beggars, they are a pand
of extorti0ners, liars, swindlers and
thieves. They never ask an honest price
for anything. The wall of a street
vender can only be ikened to the
last dying howl of a man who has
been caught in the gearing of a thresh-
ing machine or in the coils of boa con-
strictor, at once suspending ones heart
beats and lifting the hair. These vend-
ers are moving about everywhere, strung
| along the curbstones, leaning up against
corners and posts, and filling every nook
to say nothing of the sidewalks and
streets. In short Mexico, SO far as we
have seen it, Is country where half of
the men wear sombreros, half of the
women wear roboses and all the children
and the other half of the men and
women 60 naked or in pitiable rags: a
country where people are lively but who
never laugh, whose fruits are delightful
to look upon, but insipid to the taste,
whose flowers are glorious in color but
void Of fragrance, whose birds are beau
tiful Of plumage but which never sing
in short country of contradictions
whose anticipations don't seem to real
iZe.
As an earnest Of how rapidly if not
thoroughly we have done up this city
here is diary for this single last day:
"Got up at o'clock and went to the
flower market, from there to grand mass
at the cathedral. After hurried break
fast of rolls and coffee at a convenient
cafe took street car for the suburbs of
the city, then boat UP the canal to the
floating gardens Of the Aztics, a half
hour spent in splendid private museum
en- route; back by IL o'clock to the
Academy of Fine Arts; at 2 o'clock in
the National museum; at the Iturbide
hotel for o'clock dinner, at 1-2 o'clock
in carriage down the grand Plaza de Re-
forma to the hull fight; at $50 o'clock on
board OF train, taking supper as we
pulled out; s to 8 o'clock wrote this
letter.
How does the City of Mexico look or
appear, mayhap wonders some readers.
We will briefly tell you Right in the
center of a low lying, per-
fectly circular, fiat plain, of
say ten miles in diameter, hedged around
on all sides by a rim of barren, bronze
mountains, lies the city of Mexico.
place of low, square, flat-topped, heavy,
white or grey walled houses, whose win
dows are barred and whose gardens or
yards are IN the open areas or court |
places. The buildings are of stone or
plastered and penciled adobe, generally |
not more than two stories high and of |
uniform appearance, with the steeples, |
domeS and towers Of one hundred and |
thlrty-tive cathedrals and great churches |
looming up above the general surround
ings. The city is all paved with black
and lies SO near the level |
OF the lake, upon and into which it was
built, that during the rainy
season-the lake having no outlet-a
great majority of the streets are under
water from one to ten inches; sewerage
poor and sluggish.
As seen from the church of Cur
Lady Guadalupe" two or three
miles distant. the valley hedged about,
as it is, looks like vast beautiful emer-
aid disc or plaque, with white diamond
setting in the center, from which radi-
ateS like rays or spokes of a wheel
III every direction, high causeways or
roads thrown up, lined upon either side
with trees, the center the white gem of
this emerald setting the City of Mexico
We wanted to say something about the
women of this land, who have interested
Us more than all other things, but this
letter is already too long. OF the Aztec
the Toltec and of the Spaniard, with a
sprinkling of the Anglo-Saxon races, is
their blood made up, and whether
naked, in rags, in the fields,
on the streets, in the howell, in the
church or in the palace, they hold to
one general type and to the writer are
beautiful; not always beauti-
full of face. yet comely. Round heads
carried proudly, oval. dark, rich COM
plexioned faces, glorious, wide-open. lus-
rously dark eyes, sloping narrow shout
1ers, full breasts, rounded tapering
arms. generally dimpled, ditto legs, small
neat hands, tull waists and high hips.
small-feet, and as straight
as an arrow. A majority of them under
lhe average statue of American women
md all healthy, and there you have
hem. The men are 1.-THE, sinewy.
quare-shouldered and extremely mar
'ow hipped. As for babies and children
they are universal and every
where, the babies as often tended by ,
,ther children or by men as by the wo-
men.
We go two or three hundred miles
lorthward tonight and tomorrow
morning take a road which leads west
bout two hundred miles to the city of