had a sense of the richness of nature, not the prodigality of the
tropics to make man indolent, but just sufficient to give full reward
for reasonable exertion. The rich, black, fenceless plains were
burnished here and there with little shallow lakes of the rainy season,
and musical with wild birds of many species. Primitive well-sweeps
punctuated the landscape, and now and then the church towers of some
adobe village peered through the mesquite trees. In the afternoon
grazing grew more frequent and herds of cattle and flocks of goats
populated all the scene. Within the car and without, the hats of the
peons, with all their sameness, were never exactly alike. Each bore some
individuality, be it in shape, shade, material, or manner of wearing, as
distinct as among the fair sex in other lands; and that without
resorting to decorating them with flowers, vegetables, or dead
birds. Some wore around them ribbons with huge letters proposing, "Viva
----" this or that latest aspirant to the favor of the primitive-minded
"pela'o," but these were always arranged in a manner to add to rather
than detract from the artistic ensemble. Many a young woman of the same
class was quite attractive in appearance, though thick bulky noses
robbed all of the right to be called beautiful. They did not lose their
charms, such as they were, prematurely, as do so many races of the
South, and the simplicity of dress and hair arrangement added much to
the pleasing general effect.

As night descended we began to pant upward through low hills, wooded,
but free from the rocks and boulders of a mining region, and in the
first darkness drew up at Guadalajara, second city of Mexico. It is a
place that adorns the earth. Jalisco State, of which this is the
capital, has been called the Andalusia of Mexico, and the city is indeed
a Seville of the West, though lacking in her spontaneity of life, for
this cruder people is much more tempered with a constant fear of