A president of France once visited a village hostelry, and asked the woman in charge to bring him all the chicory she had in the house. After she had proudly delivered all her chicory to him he said: “And now madam, I will thank you for a cup of good coffee.” The Mexican is not above deception, however. Parrots grow here by the million and paroquets by the billion, and in nearly all colors of the rainbow, but only the ones with the yellow head will ever learn to talk, and no color of paroquets will do more than chatter. But what is that small thing to a Mexican? He simply gets a number of parrots and a pot of yellow ochre, and in three shakes of a sheep’s tail he has a cage full of yellow-head parrots worth five dollars each before they learn to talk. They next spot the American “greenies” with money to burn, and the rest, is it not written in the book of a retributive Nemesis who recorded those blue streaks of profanity when that parrot got its first bath? Yea, verily.
“In ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.”
Bret Harte may come down here with his mandolin and pick that same tune in Spanish and he will receive an encore.
The Mexican will sell you “antiquias” from a pyramid that he made last month, and he will sell you a coffee-wood walking stick that was made from an old railroad crosstie and loaded with lead, and he will sell you a blanket he stole from you last night, but when you call for coffee you get the real article, and it is not prepared in either iron or tinned vessels, but unglazed pottery. They fill your cup half full of coffee and half full of milk and pass you the sugar, and when you have done, like Oliver Twist, you call for more.
CATHEDRAL GUADALAJARA.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GUADALAJARA IN THE VALE OF LERMA.
GUADALAJARA, which is reached by the Mexican Central R. R. from Irapuata, was built in 1541 and in importance ranks next to the city of Mexico. It is the capital of Jalisco, situated near the River Lerma, which here changes its name to Santiago, in the midst of a plain hemmed in on three sides by mountains, and on the fourth side is the Canon of Santiago and the jumping-off place to the Pacific Ocean.