Part 13 (1/2)

The owner of such a farm is usually a rich man who lives with his family in a large stone house surrounded by high walls. There is a courtyard where beautiful trees and plants are growing and fountains are playing.

The wife and children of the owner wear dainty garments and are waited upon by many servants. They have the choicest food,-fruits of many kinds, chicken cooked in different ways, tortillas of course, besides all sorts of delicacies prepared by excellent cooks.

The workmen have very different homes. They live in small huts of one or two rooms, and built of mud or adobe. Inside are rough stone fireplaces, and a few mats are spread on the floor. Here the children and their parents sit while they eat their simple meals of tortillas and black beans, and here they stretch themselves at night for sleep. They are quite happy, however. Outdoors are the birds, the flowers, and the beautiful suns.h.i.+ne. They need few clothes and they do not go hungry.

There are usually large dairies on these farms where women are busy making the rich milk into b.u.t.ter and cheese. Thousands of pounds are often sent to market from one such farm during the year.

You have probably seen century plants in the hot-houses you have visited, and have been told that they belong to the aloe family. When the Spaniards first came to Mexico they saw the Indians making paper from the pulp of the leaves of the aloe plant and twine from its fibers.

The sharp thorns on the edges of the leaves furnished needles for the Indian women, and the sap of the aloe was made into pulque, the favorite drink of the natives. They also made hammocks from the fibers and thatched the roofs of their huts with the big leaves, lapping one over the other like s.h.i.+ngles. In fact, the Indians made so many uses of the aloe plant that the Spaniards thought it worth while to raise it in large quant.i.ties for themselves.

The aloe has thick, pointed leaves sometimes ten feet long. It blossoms about once in ten years, when it sends a flower stalk twenty or thirty feet up into the air. At the very top an immense cl.u.s.ter of greenish-yellow blossoms appears. All the strength of the plant goes into these blossoms for, as they open, the leaves wither and die.

The Indians have learned to tell when the plant is getting ready to send up its giant flower-stalk. Just before it appears they cut out the heart with a sharp knife, leaving only the thick, outside rind of the stem.

The sweet sap that should have gone to feed the flower-stalk begins to ooze into the hollow and continues to do so for several weeks. The Indians, who have discovered the right time to cut into the plant to prevent its flowering, have also learned that the sap can be used in making the drink which they call pulque.

The city of Mexico is a beautiful one, with high stone walls around it, a large square in the centre, and broad streets running at right angles to each other. Nearly all the houses are built of stone, with flat roofs on which the people sit in the evening to enjoy the cool breezes and watch the stars twinkling merrily in the heavens above.

The children of the big stone houses can play in inner courtyards among flowering plants and fountains. But when they leave their homes to go out into the city they must pa.s.s through heavy doors studded with nails and heavily chained. The house windows that face the street have iron bars across them, so that at first these houses seem like fortresses.

But when one pa.s.ses to the back part of such a building and looks out through the windows there upon the pretty courtyard with its fountains and flower-beds, or takes a comfortable chair on one of the balconies, with its gilded bal.u.s.trades covered with trailing vines, he begins to feel as though he were in a beautiful palace.

The great square in the middle of the city is beautiful with trees and flowers, statues, and walks paved with snowy marble. In the long-ago a temple stood here where hundreds of people were sacrificed to the G.o.ds in whom the Aztecs believed. On one side of the square stands the house of the president, and on another there is a grand cathedral where the Mexicans and their children go to wors.h.i.+p. The cathedral doors are always open so that any day you may go inside and find people kneeling there. Rich and poor, grand ladies in delicate muslins and jewels, and the poorest Indians with their packs of fruit or coops filled with chickens still on their backs, kneel in prayer side by side.

Many of the children who have been to the cathedral to wors.h.i.+p, stop as they leave it before the flower-decked stands under the trees, where women are busy selling cool drinks and sweetmeats. Or perhaps they are more interested in the Indians wandering about with cages of humming-birds and parrots, and they beg their parents or older friends who are with them to buy one of the birds to carry home.

As the children go on their way they pa.s.s many a horseman riding through the streets with broad hat shading his face, and with leggings trimmed with b.u.t.tons and silver braid. Silver spurs s.h.i.+ne brightly at his side in the sunlight, as also do the gorgeous trappings of his horse.

There are all sorts of people to be seen on the streets of Mexico. There are Indians with packs of all sorts on their backs. There are girls in gaily striped skirts selling fruit. There are water-carriers in leather ap.r.o.ns with large earthen jars on their backs and smaller ones hanging down in front; there are bird-sellers with flower-trimmed cages; there are the Indian policemen who carry lanterns at night, which they place in the middle of the street while they nap in the doorways close by.

These naps must be very short, however, because every fifteen minutes it is the business of the policemen to blow shrill whistles, and at every hour to call the time.

The Big Market.

The boys and girls of the city often visit the big market which is only a short distance from the cathedral. It is surrounded by high stone walls and on every side there is a gateway through which the people are constantly pa.s.sing.

The sides of the market are lined with shops where people are busy selling all sorts of goods. There are the stalls of butchers where only meats are to be seen. There are stands of fruit that fill the air with sweet odors. There are vegetables of many kinds, furniture, and dress-goods of all colors. There are shops where fried meats are sold to hungry people in need of a lunch. There are great piles of cocoanuts and bananas heaped upon the ground. There are fish from both lake and ocean.

Strangest of all are the cakes made out of marshflies. These flies are found in great numbers along the muddy banks of the Mexican lakes. There they lay their eggs among the flags and rushes and are killed by the Indians and made into a paste.

The middle of the market is filled with Indians who shade themselves and their wares from the hot sun by large squares of matting perched on poles. Here is one man with coops filled with chickens, and another with a stack of earthen dishes made at home. Just beyond him is a woman with a baby on her back. She is standing by the side of a patient donkey with panniers filled with melons or peaches, hanging from its sides, and a happy little two-year old child on its back. Some of the people who are busy selling their wares have come many miles and left their homes before sunrise. They have brought their families along with them, so that half-naked children and babies of all ages are to be seen everywhere. Some of them are munching fruit, others playing hide-and-seek among the crowds, while many a tiny baby is nodding itself to sleep on its mother's back or crying with all its might for a little attention.

The Museums.

The children of the city are fond of visiting the museums, for there they can see many of the wonderful things made by the Aztecs in the time of their great ruler, Montezuma.

First of all they stop before a large bed of flowers in the court, in the center of which is the ”sacrificial stone” where, in the old days before the coming of the white men, people were offered up to the G.o.ds in whom they believed. Near by are the hideous statues of two of these G.o.ds. They are not pleasant to look at, so the visitors pa.s.s quickly into the building where they can see Aztec vases ornamented with strange carving, masks of volcanic gla.s.s, the wonderful feather s.h.i.+elds of Montezuma, books filled with picture-writing, and images made of wax and representing all kinds of life in Mexico. There is the Indian with his pack, the charcoal-seller with his donkey beside him laden with coal, the flower-vender with bouquets of flowers in her hands.