[17] Lit., a compaternity.
[18] A kind of meat pudding, strongly seasoned with pimenta.
[19] Here's your fine duck, my jewel; come, buy, my young master.
[20] Tamales, made in Queretaro, a town about forty leagues from Mexico.
[21] A shawl, which is sometimes used as a head-dress.
[22] A China is, in Mexico, what the manola is in Madrid, and the grisette in Paris.
CHAPTER II.
A Mexican Gambling-house.—Navaja, the Mexican Bravo.—John Pearce, the Yankee.
Night had come; one of those nights in May in which Mexico, seen by moonlight, assumes an appearance almost magical. The pale light of the moon sheds its soft radiance upon the stained steeples of the churches and the colored façades of the monuments. The moon here scatters her voluptuous light over the earth in a bounteous fashion, unknown in our northern regions. The crowd upon the Plaza Mayor was not so dense as before sunset; it was less noisy, and more scattered. The promenaders spoke in a low tone, as if they feared to break the silence which was brooding over all. The light noise produced by the waving of fans, the rustle of silk dresses, sometimes a peal of female laughter, melodious and clear as the tone of a crystal bell, or the striking of a church clock at a distance, alone broke the general silence. Veiled women, and men wrapped in long cloaks, glided like shadows over the sand, that hardly crunched beneath their tread. I saw more than one mysterious couple, whose appearance there would probably furnish dainty food to the scandal-loving denizens of the drawing-room. Besides young and beautiful women, there were also those who, to use an English expression, were on the shady side of thirty years. You could see also a considerable number of those doncellas chanflonas, those beauties of easy virtue mentioned by Perez of Guevara. I say nothing of the adventure-seekers whom you find every where in Mexico—bullies, who wear the pavement with their sabres and spurs. Such was the motley crowd which pushed and jostled one another on the Plaza Mayor at the very time I was betaking myself, not without some fear, I must say, to the Callejon del Arco.