Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/15

The Necatitlan Square presented an appearance at once strange and novel. On one side, where the sun darted his unpitying rays upon the palcos de sol,^[1] stood the people, with cloaks and rebozos hung over their heads as a shade, clustered in noisy, animated groups on the steps of the circus, and keeping up a lively concert of whistling and groaning. On the shady side, the nodding plumes of the officers' hats, and the variegated silk shawls of the ladies, presented to the eye an appearance which contrasted strongly with the wretchedness and misery of the rabble in the palcos de sol. I had witnessed bull-fights a hundred times. I had seen this dirty mass of people, wearied and exhausted in body, but with as keen a relish for slaughter as ever, their tongues sticking to the roofs of their mouths, and their throats dry and parched as the sand, when the setting sun darted his long rays through the ill-joined boards of the amphitheatre, and when the scent of the blood lured the hungry vultures who were sailing in the air above, but I never saw the arena so transformed as it was at that time. Numerous wooden erections filled the space ordinarily devoted to the bull-fights; these, covered with grass, flowers, and sweet-smelling branches of trees, made the whole place assume the appearance of a vast hall, growing, as it were, out of the ground, and forming a series of shady groves, with paths winding through them. Little booths were dispersed here and there through the groves, some intended for the preparation of delicate articles of Mexican cookery, others for the sale of cool, refreshing drinks. In the cookery booths you could indulge in the luxury of nameless ragouts of pork, seasoned with pimenta. In the puestos^[2] glittered im-

1. Those parts of the circus exposed to the sun.
2. Portable shops.