:Mary Elizabeth Blake

“ Through this wood, shadowy as twilight even at midday, the carriage-road winds and mounts to the summit, whereon the castle and military academy are built. And standing on the terrace from which these arise, one looks for the first time across the Valley of Mexico.
In the natural order, there is nothing more wonderful than this scene for loveliness in the wide world,—nothing more calculated to intoxicate the soul with the simple glory of living, since earth still holds such beauty for eyes of man. ”

“ Most exquisite views open at each new curve of the climbing road; grand as those of Colorado, but with a picturesque entourage that gives a subtle foreign aroma which that wild beauty lacks. Hills, mountain-sides, deep cup-like valleys, all are glowing with verdure; and the loving touch of humanity softens the rugged grandeur of Nature. The odd, pretty, miserable houses, with walls of adobe, and roof of thatch or fluted scales of red tiles; the lofty, deep-domed sky, clear and dazzling; the clouds resting ever on far-off mountain-tops ”

“ Even the electric lights at night have an eerie look. They were always unnatural, with their cold white glare and frozen sparkle; but they are a thousand times more unnatural here, glittering above a people and a country as primitive as if the world were a thousand years younger. Those pale candles, like farthing rushlights, that disturb the dark no more than so many glow-worms — they are the Lights o' Mexico for the present.
It is the common people who are the principal interest to the traveller. ”

“ Prosperity is the touchstone of beauty; having that, they care for no other. The Midas touch which transmutes every thing it reaches into gold cannot spare such simple things as hedgerows and lanes, which add only treasures to the soul, and none to the pocket.
Fortunately for the sentimental traveller, — as he who looks through the world for pleasure instead of profit may well be called, — this fair southern country has not yet been aroused to such sense of its importance as to require the sacrifice of its luxurious, unconscious loveliness upon the altar of interest. ”

“ Puebla and Mexico, the two principal centres of the country, share more than other places the cosmopolitan character of European cities, as well as the extremes of riches and poverty. While nothing is more superb than their palaces, few things are more squalid than the huts of the poor. The homes of the rich are on a magnificent scale of luxury. An arched driveway leads from the street to the central courtyard tiled with marbles, bright with flowers, statues, and splashing fountains, surrounded by all the appliances which wealth can suggest to indolence. ”

“ Down a steep side street — every street climbs up or runs down a hill — to the beautiful old church with its monstrous façade of carved freestone and three unique spires, and the covered market with its double rows of open Moorish arches, we passed with new delight at every step. Every thing is glowing with color — the sky deep as Italy, the frescos, the flowers, the fine ash trees, the brightly dressed people, the broad white stone seats. ”

“ It is Sunday morning in the City of Mexico. The air is filled with the thin tinkling of innumerable bells; and, guided by their stridulous call, the streets swarm in every direction with a church-going multitude. The strange, overpowering smells of the sewerless city are masked for the time by the fragrance of flowers in the hands of every passing woman and child, — flowers massed in the arms of street-sellers, flowers stacked on the corners and gateways of courts waiting for customers ”

“ The young girls wear flowers in their dark hair; the elders drape head and shoulders in the soft black lace of the mantilla, which adds a new grace to even a homely woman; the cavaliers are valiant in all the picturesque bravery that youth can dare or money purchase; and a gay whirlwind of nods and smiles, and that fascinating little Mexican greeting which is spoken with the fingers, blows away forever your idea of undiluted misery. For two hours, at least, each day, the world of fashion, of folly, and perhaps of pleasure, has its own way ”

“ To sing the praise of that being, as delicate as beautiful, as loving as resigned, as generous as tender, as modest as heroic; of her who is all love and sacrifice, who has come into the world to be the beloved companion of youth, and the sweet consoler of age; who gives wisdom to science, genius to art, and heroes to the native land, — ah, to sing of woman is for the poet to pay the divine debt of inspiration to the highest work of humanity, and to the being who has brought divinity down to earth! ”

“ Every occupation has its distinctive mark in dress, which is like a class badge; and this, with the varying costumes of Indian, Spaniard, Mexican, Frenchman, and American filling the narrow pavements, gives constant variety to the swaying crowd. Anywhere along the curbstone, native men or women sit down to rest with basket or bundle; and some of the groups thus made are exceedingly picturesque. Each long vista, gay with color and life, is closed at last by some towering mountain height, which frowns or smiles as sun or shadow rests upon it. ”

“ With him, beneath the thin veil of imperial power, Mexico would have been likely to feel the protecting warmth of a wise and kind father's love, supplemented by the best counsel which modern science and wisdom can lend to government; as it is, under the title of a republic, she is become the battle-ground for a host of needy partisans, greedy for gain, ambitious for power, and openly parading the worst vices of a military despotism under the stolen name of liberty. ”

“ Half way up the stony slope, facing the lovely city which lies on the opposite side of the valley, rich in brilliantly colored domes and towers, with sunny fields and shaded avenues stretching about the course of the small Rio, and the pale, shadowy mountains filling the blue distance, stand the three stone crosses marking the scene of the tragedy whose shadow rests yet on many hearts. On the quiet plain between, in that June dawning, the Mexican army was drawn up to see the last act of the short drama. ”

“ Reminiscences of the author's boyhood in the little city of Tixtla, with the entire population following the procession of Corpus Christi through streets arched with green boughs, and garlanded with blossoms, remind one of the Passion Play of Oberammergau. Such ardor of devotion, such reverent silence, such echo of sweetness from the low-chanting Indian choristers, flower-crowned, and bearing branches of new-budded orchard trees, in order that their fruits might find favor in the eyes of God, form an ideal picture of religious enthusiasm. ”

“ These brave workers are so surprised and unprepared for either pity or sympathy that we begin to cover both with the negative quality of indifference. Still, to look day after day at street pavers and sweepers, working as if fame or fortune depended on despatch; porters hurrying under the weight of their enormous burdens; farm laborers ploughing, reaping, gathering wood, drawing water, hour after hour, without a turn of the head or lifting of an eye-lash for the world outside, decidedly upsets one's preconceived notions, and leaves one in a maze of reflections. ”

“ The pretty girls are exquisite: the slender oval of the face, the rich olive of the cheek, the long, sweeping dark lashes over superb eyes glowing at once with passion and tenderness, the low forehead with its rippling mass of dusky hair, the slender neck, the lithe form, the springing step, and the dainty foot, make them like a poet's dream of darkly brilliant loveliness, not to be measured by any type with which we have been heretofore familiar. But Nature is never over-lavish, and the number of these splendid creatures is as few as their perfections are many. ”

“ Unlike the great peaks of Colorado and New Mexico, which spring almost invariably from a barren and forbidding country, torn and devastated by the same force which caused the primal upheaving, and bearing still its sombre impress, these beautiful forms, wonderful in color and majesty, tower above a world as beautiful as themselves. The exquisite valley takes now a thousand shapes of loveliness. Tropical vegetation shows itself sufficiently to make the landscape rich and bounteous ”

“ She was doubtless the daughter of a rich house; but among this simple people every woman works, and she bore upon her head one of the huge water-jars of the country, balanced without aid from her hands, and without impairing the dignity and elegance of her carriage. An artist looking upon her might have imagined a new Rebecca; for nothing is more faithful to the biblical idea than the young girls of the coast who come to the wells for water, poising their great red jars upon the head without disturbing in the least their lightness or freedom of motion. ”

“ Never has the loveliness or the virtue of woman shone more resplendently than when lifted upon the wings of poetry into the realms of the ideal; as when proclaimed in rhythmic cadence by the lyre of the poet, whose sensitive and passionate soul is alone capable of comprehending her. Her beauty, her tenderness, her smiles, her tears, have been the inspiration of the names that live through ages. ”

“ A better class, or a larger number of a better class, than we had found in any town before, made the streets interesting. The moment the people are lifted into the dignity of self-support, that moment they become joyous and hopeful. We saw new birds in the trees of the plaza; a species of large black crow, with a short but pleasant song. The frescos of the houses were more elaborate and brilliant, the fountains better supplied, the squares enclosed in fine stone balustrades, and the stone seats softly tinted. ”

“ These are sometimes very beautiful, with masses of vegetables and flowers piled high in fantastic shapes; sometimes as ugly as garbage and offal can make them. Historians of ancient Mexico paint an exquisite picture of the light peroque of the Aztec, floating with the dawn down the shining water toward the Venice-like city on the lake, wreathed in bloom, its flower-crowned crew chanting hymns to the sun god, and the atmosphere of peace and innocence brightening the scene. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While the valley through which we were passing was dark with night shadows, the dome-like summit, radiant with crimson sunset-glow, lifted its glorious, shining head into the pure, pale air, while a dense mass of cloud swept between it and the lordly base, lost already in the growing darkness. It transcended all we had yet known of mountain scenery, and its nearness made the towering height stupendous. ”

“ Lavish blossoms, in gorgeous masses of red and yellow, glow alike on tree and shrub, until one almost fancies the forests filled with the gaudy plumage of birds, so large and striking are the separate blossoms. Here and there, as in the falls of the Atoyac, the water breaks through some mountain-gap, to bury itself in a fathomless depth of verdure below, and a rich, sensuous delight holds one enthralled in a delicious languor.
It is paradise for the body, but it is too much for the soul. Spiritual strength weakens before this luxurious mass of material force. ”

“ According to the principle in natural law, which makes one more readily cognizant of vice than of virtue, we notice the bad odors most now; but by means of that divine system of compensation which makes the memory of evil fade, while that of good lives forever, it is the scent of her rose-gardens, the sweet, evanescent perfumes of her tangled flower-hedges, and thickets of fragrant shrubs, that we will remember during the long Northern days when all this changeful experience shall seem but a midsummer night's dream. ”

“ The beautiful stone arches of the aqueducts, bringing water from the hills, shone in the half light with a dignity even greater than that added by radiant sunlight; and the small white villages, each an indistinct mass of walls and towers, nestled into the background of mountains, vague yet beautiful, as adding human interest to the distant scene. Elegance and wealth crowded the long avenue with loveliness and life, poverty and rags crouched by the wayside ”

“ Remembering the streets at home after the Friday-afternoon rehearsal, filled with the fragile, flowerlike bloom of winsome but delicate girlhood, its brave eyes looking the world full in the face with that mixture of innocence and boldness which is the hybrid blossom of modern civilization, these shy but rich specimens, as rare as they are wonderful, look few indeed. Their perfection is offset by an equally pronounced ugliness on the part of the many; and young womanhood changes into faded middle age even sooner than with us, — which is saying a great deal. ”

“ Along the sides of the narrow-gauge road leading from the main line to Marfil, whence tram-cars lead to Guanajuata, mines begin to dot the mountain-sides, and the quiet hurry of a Mexican business district creeps into the scene. The roads become alive with herds of burros laden with every product of tropic or temperate zone, and shambling solemnly, earnestly, lopearedly, toward the distant market town. ”

“ The people, reverent and silent, glide in for a moment's prayer in the pauses of the day's duties; and a certain mystical atmosphere of religious solemnity, which seems to belong by right to the place, forces itself upon the most material nature. The great cathedrals of Puebla and Mexico reach naturally the highest expression of artistic merit, being magnificent in proportion, and richer even than usual in carving and bas-reliefs. ”