showing dead cooks in their earthly element -
gay little skull headed figurines presiding
over tables of make-believe dainties.
There are make believe foods which one
buys, in playful mockery of the real food
placed on the graves. You look at the two
blue plates you bought, heaped with clay
fruits all brilliantly painted - bananas, grapes,
a segment of sgar cane, a slive of watermelon
and a pomegranate spilt open to show its
seeds - the yellow curve of a banana under that.
There is a painted pig with a whole flock
of lesser pigs. . . and a scarlet horn with
purple mouthpiece, made of clay. . . music,
gaiety for the dead. There are sugar busts of
saints all frosted with curlicues of pink. . .

In AMECAMECA, on top of the Sacromonte, in
the great cemetery, every oblong mound
of grave is decorated with flowers. Some
have vast floral pieces help together with
wire frames - a heart of violets and gardenias.
Some have simple strewings of rose petals over
the mound. Some have lanterns on sticks,
stuck into the soil at the head of the grave,
lanterns cut in tin, like the moorish, paned with
little hexagonal polygons of glass colored glass.
Some have candles stuck into the heart of
calla lilies - one lily at each of the 4 corners
of the grave. All have black clay
censers in which copal burns - the dead
wafting back among the living in the streamers
of sweet smoke that circle unbroken in the still
air. The familes are grouped like the flowers -
in patterned plan so it seems. There are vast
lunch baskets covered over with white napkins.
There are jugs, gourds, barrels of pulque.
And guitars. . . . The dead are given the joy
of seeing their living gay and happy.

All day long, up the scared way of the
mount, under great ahuhuete trees bearded
in moss, the stream of natives goes. . . laden
with offerings.

In another cemetery - in Tepeclixpa.

Tepeclixpa is a pure Indian village built on a hogback with its tiled roofs spilling down both sides. On the highest crest of the hill - an Indian church in a wide enclosure surrounded by pinnacled wall. Four beautiful gates in the wall frame pictures of the distant mountains. Eucalyptus trees before the church, clean barked - stripped to color. The cemetery is across the worn rock road.

Here within a low stone wall, the graveyard has been plucked clear of every weed. The weeds lie in great drifts at the base of the wall, raked there and piled. A year's growth of weed - since last Day of the Dead. All over the graveyard are Indians still at work, patting into shape the oblong mounds, bevelling them neatly. Here is the rich brown earth mounded over rectangularly. . .rich brown earth of mounds strewn over with orange flowers, the marigold. Orange petals snowed over the black earth, and orange candles burning. Some few graves vary - designs in white daisies picked out with rosebuds - a cross, a sacred heart. Three or four great eucalyptus trees stand guard, fringing off the picture of Ixtaccymatl in the distance.

Black earth, orange flowers - occasionally the vivid magenta of wild orchids. . . .and incense pots of copal blowing a blue haze over all. The hammering, patting and snovelling of new earth, as old graves are raised afresh in symmetry, makes a soft busy sound. . .insistent. The Indian women group quietly around the mounds, each figure sharply drawn in this clear, almost holy, light.

Later, we go to Rosario mass in the little church. An altar brilliantly lit with many candles. . .an altar like all the toys the Indians have every mass - ingenuous, bright, adorable. An Indian priest intones mass in a beautiful baritone. The Indians kneel, their sandalled feet like the earth-sculptures of the grave-mounds - all of a color with earth. Their lighted candles, held before brown faces, . . . .

HAVANA - SHORE LEAVE

Glorious harbor - a boat swings in the narrows channel between Morro Castle and the intense green against hoary ruins. A sheet of blue, Gulf water, smooth as flying fish leaping through the surface, cutting thin fan lines across water. As dock is approached - the curious tremolo calling one hears... then the human heads bobbing around directly in path of ship - the boy swimmers, coming out for coins, calling, calling, yoo-hoo. Indefatigably they call, paddling, tramping water, diving to catch every coin tossed, stowing it in their cheeks. They swim in the bilge water released from ship - in dirt, among great parasolling jelly-fish.

Havana is a place for sailor shore leave. There is the famous Daiguiri cocktail at Cafe Florida - rum and pineapple juice, with small ice afloat. A negro street orchestra - cello, violin and guitar, and rumba rattles. The players wear straw hats, bow ties and they have shirt tails out. Marvelous playing. We ride through the town. . . nigger boys catching on end of car, by the dozen, singing as we roll along. Stop to buy avocados big as footballs. Five cents each - from old Chinamen who had tropical fruit shop. Buy rumba rattles. . . gourds with some hard dried seeds in them. Buy birds - little tame green birds in cage. We ride out through residential section - awful opulence. Except Hotel Trotcha - an old old honeymoon hotel, all fretted wood-work and stairways. Stop at Trotcha for drink. . . the wonderful old garden, the maiden-hair fern on a ten foot tree-trunk. . . banana palms, bougainvillia, etc. A charming old hotel -

Vera Cruz - the terrible ordeal of customs in a tropical heat. Everyone seems good-natured, in a vast warehouse shed that multiplies every sound. First look at a Mexican City - little stucco facades, all brightly colored. The old cobbled streets, grass-grown between stones, chickens wandering about. Streets all have holes and bumps in them, and chauffeurs wind around the holes, making car do a sort of whinling waltz. The great carrion birds - zopilotes - naked necked, horrible, perching by scores on every roof-tree. These are the Street Cleaning Dept. of Vera Cruz - a big fine for killing. They are everywhere - when we ride through the town, and out along the beach, zopilotes waddle ahead of car, a strangely human walk, heavy-footed. They circle over the beer pavilion on the beach. . . they wings crack like leaves of banana palms snapping.

The HOTEL IMPERIAL - room with
shower, bath and toilet for 6 pesos.
strange room - one knows one is in
a foreign country. .outside, the
enormous lobby, high as 3 strngles of the
hotel. . . the cage of elevator -
and outside foyer - the tables under
arcaes. Here you sit, watching idling
life of Plaza opposite - driving away
the vendors who circle perpetually the
tables. Lottery tickets, combs, straw
baskets, more combs, always combs. Why
combs? We see an ancient musician with
a portable harp. He sits and plays on
the loose strings.

In the Plaza, at 5:30, suddenly all
the birds in V.C. come home to roost.
One hears an uproar indescribable - like
50,000 hay-ricks creaking. In half an
hour, all is quiet.

VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO CITY - The famous train ride, from tropical levels, up to temperate zones of the plateau at 8,000 feet. Get seats in observation car - a comfortable, very superior car. Heat is intense for a while - scenery gorgeous. Trees one has never seen before - a tropical underbrush specked with flowers - long lush grass, the end of the rainy season. As we climb, we get into thicker jungly tropical growths - banana palms, pineapples, coffee bushes. . . coco palms everywhere. At each little station, the people of the town cluster around, with fruits and wares. Indian women with baskets on their heads - wondrous tempting fruits - chirimoyas, guavas, mangoes, bahanas - red, yellow, miniature, gargantuan. - For a few pennies one buys bunches of bananas, baskets of fruits, basket included. - Comes the station called Fortin - flowers now. Gardenias. A segment of banana stem, hollow, closed at each end, filled with gardenias. . . the pink hollow stem like a refrigerator, keeps the gardenias fresh until Mexico City. - Then the floral pienes - great wedding-cake towers all of gardenias - each flower tied to a stick, the twig stuck into the soft pulp of Banana stem - creations that make one cry for joy, everyone buys - the train suddenly turns into a hot-house - gardenia perfume. There are little baskets - great spreading surface of gardenias, studded with red camellias. Train winds through XXIII tropical country, little stations draped in brilliant bougainvillia - the strange trees have orchids on their tops - great bushes of camellias - all so brilliant.

The peak of Orizaba - perpetual snow - we wind around it continually, seeing it from right, then from left. . .finally the town of Esperanza - the top of the climb. A Fred Harvey station lunch - very

delicious. Then on to the high plateau.

Plants, flowers and trees become recognizable. There are fields of wild cosmos, more intense in hue. Mustard and golden-rod - against a vast blue sky filled with the miraculous white clouds of Mexico. Round-toppe mountains hem in each vista - and the long plains are covered with maguey - the speared, grey-green plant providing fiber and pulque. Great maguey plantations - stretching for miles, glimpses of the haciendas making owning them. Villages far off on the plain - each with a snow-white church, curiously suggestive of Arab mosques. . . always the bluish green atmosphere - shadowws the color of maguey leaves. Corn between maguey plantations - corn and maguey, the life-staffs of Mexico. At stations, . . pulque is sold - Indian women with earthen jugs filled with wite milky fluid - little earthen cups out of which one drinks. The air is chill, bracing, and the ears respond to altitude. . . . Each station provides its little human excitement. A blind Indian musician at one - his wife in blue rebozo and sombre face, guiding him from window to window. He plays a guitar to which a harmonica is attached. Under his foot, a little bell, such as school-teachers have on their desks. She moves the bell for him, placing it under his foot each time. He plays - tapping bell-time. . . ending always with La Paloma.

Now we come near Mexico - Popo hides in the clouds, but Teotihuacan pyramids are visible, looking not so impressive from the train. But later - on foot. . . . Then Guadalupe - the Mecca of Mexico. Then Mexico City.

One's first impression is disappointing. Autos, millions of them, buses and trams - a bustling western life - the surface impression, but that will change. Meanwhile, altitude affects one. . . weariness for a day or so. Afterwards. . . Mexico comes into the heart.

MONTE ALBAN COLLECTION IN NATIONAL MUSEUM.

In February 1932, down near Oaxaca, they bore into a round and brought up buckets of pearls, gold, jade, HEX rock crystal. These are gorgeous Aztec things. There are little gold faces, exquisitely sculptured Aztec gods, perhaps. Masques which shame the craftsmanship of Benvenuto Cellini. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces and a bright shinging gold. Bracelets - six inches in depth. necklaces of jade and perfectly rounded gold beads. A treasure unimaginable. These are recently found. Not much explanation as yet, and their housing only temporary. There is a rock crystal goblet so perfect. There is a long thin gold feather - nearly a foot long, beaten thin, tapering to a point. These they wore in their head dresses. One can see these glinting gold feathers waving over the heads of Aztec princes. Suppose, flexible beaten gold - one sees these wide gold bracelets on arms, and rock crystal hoops on their ear lobes. . . and one can imagine with a pang how Cortes and his men must have stared. . . before leaping. This one gold feather stirs the heart, shakes it, for its beauty, and what it evokes.

There is a human skull in the collection - inlaid with mosaic of turquoise, and round disks of rock crystal. perhaps, in the eye sockets. What did this mean?

Downstairs there is the MONOLITH ROOM of the museum - here the Maya things are collected. These are different. These are huge, terrifying. The goddess of fertility - a human body, covered with twining serpents. Here are the Chac-Moolsthe unexplained figures reclining, holding bowls on their abdomens. . . faces turned sharply, round eyes staring straight up - amazing, terrifying things for all their simplicity.

Here also is the round stone six feet
in diameter - which is the Aztec
calendar - in use at a time when Europe
did not know how to compute Time correctly.

THE ZOCALA - the center of the town. The
Palace on one side - the Cathedral, etc.
We go to mass in the elaborate "Sanctuary"
next to the Cathedral - it is gorgeous with
gold altar pieces but the floor is old
planking in wood on which the natives kneel
and sometimes beat their foreheads. The
whole building sinks out of plumb (Mexico's
spongey sub-strata) - the effect of
something about to happen, enhanced by
great cracks on the facade. The Cathedral
is likewsie. Its wooded floor ruffled like
a rolly coaster, billowing. The Altar
of the Kings - designed by designer of
Seville's Altar - tremendous, rococo,
gold, splendid. Atop the edifice, the
angel hands holding two little bird houses!

Behind the Zocala - a few steps off -
a fenced in space, with excavations -
Aztec ruins someone found - one looks
down on something resembling a passageway-
and stairs - staunchly supported with
buttresses - stout, solid building in
reddish lava stone. This was part of
some vastedifice of which these stones are
scattered now - gone into the houses round
the square, into the cathedral, itself
built on top of an Aztec god house - teocalli.

One is not going to get away from the civil-
ization of Montezuma here. It will pop up
everywhere. . .and behind that, more
mysterious still - the Maya.

CUERNAVACA: A perfect motor road forty odd miles, through the Valley of Mexico, over the rimming mountains to an adjacent valley where Cuernavaca lies. The mountains are wild and untenanted. Occasionally the youthful soldiers of the Rural Police are encountered - round-faced Indian boys, seeming to play at soldiering, proud of their heavy equipment and mountaineers khaki - one's first thought as a question "What would these chocolate soldiers do if a real bandit rode over their horizon". . . then one remembers Aztec history - how these mild-faced Indians can fight, absolutely fearless, reckless. One sees the huts where they station themselves - huts reminiscent of South Seas - round, with peaked thatched roofs - not much more than a wind-break with a few blankets on the earth floor. Their women - the only kind who would follow them to their lonely stations - Indians - typical squaws, crouching over braziers, impervious to winds, rains, solitude. There is a half-way stop - Las Tres Marias - high in the mountains - a segment of road lined with food shops and bars - with Indians selling tacos - a spicy tamale air. Then wilderness again - and finally the long swing d toward Cuernavaca.

Did the Morrows and their Painted Pig spoil Cuernavaca? Or is it the fault of the two or three luxury hotels catering to Mexico City week-enders? The town seems aware of itself. There are no native handicraft worthy of the name. Where we expected ravishing. Painted Pigs, we saw celluloid kewpies one foot tall, dressed as Hula dancers. There are many streets of small shops, yet one looks in vain for the admirable native work. The town - physically fascinating - all lava cobbled and hoary - with a quaint Plaza centered by a pagodaed bandstand. The Cathedral is the one sacred spot, undefiled. In a vast enclosure, backgrounded by the charming facade of the church, Indian children play, mothers stroll through the gardens. The little boys spin

tops on the flagstones near the fountain and from
a doorway giving out on the close, comes
the slap-slap of a tortilla maker. The garden
sparkles with pools. The facade of the
cathedral - a massive fortressed edifice, is
patinaed with mosses and dark lichens through
which patches of bright blue wash over
yellow stone gleam. The whole charm is on
the outside. The interior, like so many Mexican
churches, is hideous. One altar - a doll under
glass - nothing more nor less than what comes
out of a child's nursery. Under another glass
there is a conquistador in pink silk blouse,
red satin cape and leggins, with a great
bunch of colored plumes in his helmet over
brown doll-curls. Why the conquistador
on an altar? Having passed through a garden
like unto eden - one finds white paper roses on
the altars and muslin lilies!

The House of Cortez (another one, like
Washington's beds in New England) - has a
marvelous balcony overlooking red-tiled roofs
and the valley beyond - here are frescos of
Diego Rivera - his fatiguing fertility of
imagination. We preferred the clouds over the
valley - the magnificent clouds of Mexico.

The markets - Indian markets at top of
town - under canvases, like Arab souks -
again disappointment. More Kewpies, monkkes
on springs to jiggle in frends' faces, cheap
pottery reminiscent of the curse of Ezecho
Slovakia. Once we saw from a distance a
cubicle shop with bright colors on the shelves -
"Zarapes!" we cried - and thought at last. . .
but they were cotton comforters of American make.

The lava cobbles of Cuernavaca are worse
than French cobbles to walk over.

But on the return to Mexico City - there
comes a view - the entire valley from the
crest of the mts. at sunset. This is
priyer. This is magnificence. This is
the Pacific Southwest done in opals instead
of raw sienna and turquoise. This is a
cloudscape incomparable. This is why one goes
to Cuernavaca. . . to see Mexico Valley
on the return, at sunset.

## PUEBLA and CHOLULA

Another climb out of the Valley of Mexico, toward Popo and Ixta this time - the twin volcano guardians of the city.

There is a stopping place in the mountains from which Popo is visible - arranged by the gov't, called Cenador de la Commission - instead of "Look-out" "Viewpoint" etc, as in our National Parks.

The halfway point on this ride is Rio Frio - a bleak mountain pass through which Cortes marched on his vengeful return to the Aztec Tenochtitlan. Rio Frio now has gas, oib, and the ubiquitous tamale and taco vendors, Diego Rivera figures - all bulk bundled in dark blue rebosos, huddled over braziers.

After the pass, comes San Martin Texmelucan where market is held on Tuesday. A worthy sight. All about the state of Puebla are textile factories, and the cotton and linen goods are sold in native markets. Here we saw whole lengths of streets occupied by textile vendors. They bunch up their colored clothes, like great flowers sprouting out of the padded first of the road - long vistas of puffed color. A magnificent vegetable market - red radishes fourteen inches in length, laid out on the ground with their tapered roots pointing outward. Fruits - all the tropical varieties, packed up from the Vera Cruz region on donkey or Indian back - one could write poems on the fruit arrangements in Mexico. Pyramids of apples, pyramids of peanuts, even. So many for so many centavos, and they always manage to make a pyramid of that so many - as if remembering racially the larger pyramids of painted stone their ancestors erected to make history.

After Texmelucan, EMX the road follows a wide valley between Popo and Ixta one one side, and Malinche, on the other. Malinche, named for the mistress of Cortes, she who betrayed her Indians by acting as interpreter, has no snow, no glory. She lies on her back stony and bleak, staring upward. From

what sailor ever got that far inland?
Once a year she is said to disappear.
Reputable citizens have seen her gone from
her high altar. When, next morning, she
returns, there is sand in her drapes - she
has been conging the sailors on some
far beach of Mexico. The sand they shake
from her garments is saved (and sold)
and even a sea-shell or two has been known
to drop from her robes!

OAXACA - The drygoods stores enchant the Indians. Big show windows have iron rails across their fronts, convenient leaning rails. Here they lean and peer - motionless for a half hour - their sombreros, sapapes making strange foreground to the stacked bolts of factory loomed ginghams.

The curb venders on market day - just a handful of goods to sell - peanuts, pitched-kindling, a little mess of seeds and one white flower in a cup, to show what will come of these seeds, if planted. Candies, gummy sweet fruits. . .

The good-natured Indian woman wandering about with 3 chickens held head down by the feet. . . "Oh PLEASE buy my chickens!". Next day she had a basket with some dozen eggs - and would sell us her eggs. . . but not achieving that, enjoyed walking about the market with us, seeing sights, occasionally remembering to mention her eggs to us in plaintive moan, belied by her fat friendly smile..

The odd pig to be sold - squealing.

The cheery Indian selling a bowl of red maguey worms, nicely salted - Gusano - her wood bowl outstretched, teasing, to us. We run, delicately screaming. . . and this, to the Indian women, was a great show.

In the market the butter comes wrapped in corn leav

nusks, butter shaped like a fat ear of corn. It is fresh and appealing.

From the mts. come Zapotec Indian women with strips of dried meat to sell - purplish looking, something like 'jerky'. and rope bags of small tough apples, gathered wild, for sale.

Oaxaca has the only cafe-terrasse we have found. Under the arcades, facing the Zocalo - one sits to beer and eats peanuts, garlic and tiny red chilis fried together to a crisp - salted. A superb adjunct to beer. The cathedral is visible on one's left - the toppled remains of the national palace. But principally - all the world of Oaxaca goes by laden - the small upright bodies of women sailing along with loaded baskets on their heads. Men with their head straps which swing backward to encompass some vast load which they carry, stooped.

Every aft. near 5:30 the fresh pan dulce goes to market. You see it going through the streets on a great plank - stacks of buns, sugared cookies, flaky pastries. . . boys trod along bearing their planks. . . and not one bun ever rolls off. We buy the breads in the market - and we say Franci has no more delicious pastries than those of the Indian women cooks.

The shoe-shine boys in the park - This cafe-terrasse, our mid-afternoon haunt. What matter if times the sidewalk is sprinkled with sheep-dip? It smells clean, anyhow.

Take bus rides for 10 centavos - out to edges of town to see how the purple mountains crowd in - and the glorious cloud-scapes, always. The buses are ancient model T Fords - always with a plume of steam from the radiator - always looking as if ready to fall apart. Two long seats facing each other. . . .

See how the mts. ring it in - blue, cloud piled. Monte Alban always visible from Oaxaca - and one begins to decry **MUNICIPALITY** unexcavated pyramids on every mountain top.

Monte Alban - a magnificent setting, those ancient people chose top-of-the-world places for their temples. Only the grand stairway excavated - but far opposite, a grassy mound, showing symmetry under its shrubs, giving one a guess as to what the symmetrical outline of the mt. city was. This one day will be the Acropolis of America. Under shrubs and tangled weeds, one sees mounds, domes and angled prominences. And the ground is strewn with stone bits, as if some vast archeological moraine were deposited there.

The antique dealers in Oaxaca -

A Dona in black shawl, very stately, trailing a sad maid (sad with her exalted state) has filigree gold earrings to sell, kept in a Coty powder box with handfuls of other gold jewelry. A most amiable little man comes to the hotel each night, tapping at our door - "idoles y idolitos" for sale. ... beads, stones and bits of rock crystal strung with jade scraps on a string - things he has kicked up out of the dust of Monte Alban. Another, set apart by his stiff straw hat - has numerous tin boxes filled with pieces of idols, Spanish coins, gold medals struck off for the Centennial of Mexican Independance, lockets, scraps of obsidian, beads, chains, even an American quarter -

Then there are gold mines for sale! Remember Thomas West - his shined shoes and frayed cuffs, his walrus whiskers and the gleam of perpetual hope in aged eyes. . .

The ubiquitous sarape merchants who unfurl their bright blankets under your balcony window. . .

The old men returning down the street from market, talking, talking, while brown fingers

are busy weaving hats. . . . they carry
the odd hat on top of their sombrero -
sometimes wearing several at a time,
stacked pagoda-wide. . .

Tlacolula, the yearly market - the
Mexican family with which we ride out
to Mitla - and all the babies suck-suck-sucking
on sugar cane, eating bananas, eating
everything, all the way, all the day.

The long train ride from Oaxaca to Puebla -
going down we had a soldier who snatched
scarlet flowers from the close embankments
for us, a travelling salesman who shared
his lunch rolled in newspaper, whilst
Alice prepared him a bowl of sliced tomatoes
and onions with lime juice (THESE MEXICAN
LIMES!) over it. Returning - not such
good company. . . but there is the glimpse
of Orizaba, just at sunset. . .

PUEBLA - the joy of walking its streets
and peering in doors at the patios...
The church of Santo Domingo - with its
onyx floor near the altar and its famous
Rosario chapel. . . we sit outside the church,
waiting for it to open. Every man passing lifts
his hat. . . vast sombreros lifted. . .
reverence. We are alone in
the church. We can peer curiously in the
glass coffins where statues lie. . . usually
dark shapes of women in rebosos, with candles,
group about these, and vulgar curiosity not
possible. There is a Christ in a glass
coffin - laid out on lace pillows - one
under the head, one under the buttocks,
and one under the heels. He is crowned
in thorns and bleeding. He wears a lace
petticoat. Next to this, there is
an upright case - Christ, "The Thinker"