I had barely got home when Carmona came over from the Foreign Office to say that the President begged the ladies of the American Embassy to postpone their trip, as it would be better not to run the risks of travel on unfrequented roads just now.[55]
To-day the soft-voiced Zambo that brings me objetos antiguos appeared with several handsome old coins, and an embroidered shawl, a manta, white on pale saffron. This last is now hanging out on the little oleander terrace to be sunned and aired, and the three coins have been scrubbed. One was of him of the "Iron Horse," Carolus IV 1792 Dei gratia Hispan et Ind., Rex, showing his receding forehead, aquiline nose, and pleased, voluptuous Bourbon mouth; his ear is deeply stamped with a counter-mark.
It appears these coins are still to be found throughout the Orient; each banker through whose hands they passed would stamp his own little mark on it. The other was more ancient and bore the date 1741 with the device "Utraque Unum," showing the pillars of Hercules surmounted each by a crown, and two hemispheres in between, joined by another crown. This was Philip V.'s modest device. There was also a little medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe, so defaced (I suppose it had been worn around generations of necks) that I could scarcely see the date, which appeared to be 1710.
All this seems very simple, but any foreigner living in Mexico would know that I had had a "good" morning. How the objects came into the possession of the comerciante en objetos antiguos would be quite another story.
Mexican numismatic history is as romantic as its mining history, and bound up with it. Effigies of various rulers of the nation appear and disappear with a dramatic but disconcerting rapidity. The Iturbide coins are extremely rare, but I saw one the other day, and it is on them that the eagle and the cactus first appear. On the other side, around Iturbide's bold profile with projecting jaw, is graven Augustinus I Dei Providencia, 1822. Now we have simply the eagle and the cactus, and the redoubtable word "Libertad" stamped in the Phrygian bonnet.
July 7th.
To-day we picnicked at the Casa Blanca, out beyond San Angel. It belongs to an Englishman, Mr. Morkill, now engaged in business in South America. When we got there, in spite of explicit telephonings, there was no key to be had. One person went to fetch the caretaker, who lived quién sabe where, and some one went to fetch him and so on, an endless chain. We must have been outside for nearly an hour, looking up at the loveliest and pinkest of walls, above which showed tops of palm- and fruit-trees and delicious known and unknown vines.
Finally, a very old woman and a very young boy appeared with the key to the door of that especial paradise, and we went in, with a loud sound of locking after us, and a "Pués quién sabe?" in a belated, breathless masculine voice. The garden, as all unfrequented gardens in Mexico are, was a riot of loveliness. We spent an hour wandering about its enchantment, and some one quoted that lovely poem—
A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,