VIII.
THE MOST ANCIENT AMERICAN MECCA.
On Horse.—Irrigation.—Entrance to Cholula.—Deserted Churches.—Plaza Grande, and its Cortez Horror.—A wide-awake Priest.—A wide View from the Summit.—A costly Trifle.—The Ride back.
Puebla is a modern and made-up Mecca, an imitation, and not an original. Let us to the true. Horseback is your only mode of riding here, and the horse is made for the business. In the States you run small chance of getting trained steeds for such service. Here you find none else. In Mexico city are fancy teams, but even there the back is the favorite part of the horse. Especially is it so everywhere else.
Mr. Marshall, an American Englishman, whose two sons were educated at Lowell and Chicago, furnishes us with horses, four in all. A gentleman and his wife accompany us, with the guide, an old gentleman, whose pantaloons, like Mr. Grimes, the ancient's, coat, are all buttoned down, though not before, but on the side, silver buttons too, and as thick together as it is possible to place them. Some of these garments, it is said he has, worth five hundred dollars. It would better pay his wife to wear the breeches than in ordinary cases of luxurious usurpation. His horse was as much thought of as his pantaloons, and the one danced and the other shone, and warmed the cockles of the old man's heart, so that he sang love-songs with a voice approaching the childish treble and a sentiment equally infantile or senile.
The morning was magnificent, as all mornings are here, when this company of ten galloped through the yet empty streets of Puebla. The country is soon reached, and the volcanoes rise up before us as only a mile or two away. How grand they glowed in
