“That’s quite true,” answered my servant, “but we dance for all that, and as often as we have the opportunity. Why should we neglect to cull the few flowerets growing on the short, dreary path of our life?”
I confess that I was not prepared for so much philosophy in such a place, and from such a man, savouring of a ci-devant at the time of the Convention rather than of a half-savage.
The streets of Citas might not improperly be called ridges of rock divided by minute precipices, down which, however, a stranger may break his neck. To avoid so great a calamity, we set out holding on to two native guides by means of ropes tied round our waist, for the night is pitch dark, and the distance to the jardana some 500 yards.
The house in which the entertainment is given wears a poor appearance. Three huge fires are burning, round which stand women busy with roasting and otherwise preparing the feast with chickens, turkeys, pork, etc.; whilst outside, other women are kneeling before metates, or, comals in hand, prepare tortillas to be served hot during the whole “fiesta.” A little in front is a thatched barn, lighted by smoking lamps, which forms the ball-room, with benches and chairs against the walls for the ladies, while in the centre the men dancers in white hose, flowing shirt, and loose coloured neckties, are meditating on whom their choice may fall with any chance of success. The whole village, Indians and Meztizos, are here to-night, but hardly any Ladinos or whites.
Every traveller who has witnessed these native dances, has described them as entrancing; for my part I confess that I find them devoid of attraction: the performers, without grace or animation, move gravely on one spot, without looking at or touching their partners, going round them as they would a pole, to the sound of very primitive and monotonous music.
“It is an Indian who gives the entertainment,” said my friend the judge. “It will last several days, or rather several nights, and cost at least sixty pounds, which to a native is a fortune—ruination in fact—but he will not care, and after him another will be found to take up the ball, and so on to the end of time.”
“But what happens afterwards?”
“Oh, nothing happens; they’ll go to their milpas as before; if the harvest is good they will lay by a little in view of another party when their turn comes round; if it is a bad year, they’ll pinch; if a famine, they’ll starve. Care never sits behind an Indian, and as for the lessons of experience, they seem incapable of learning them.”