It was interesting to note the special class of customers drawn in the early morning to this flower pagoda. These were the true lovers of Flora, bent upon securing their favorites while damp with dewy sweetness. There was the very humble but appreciative purchaser, who invested only a few centavos, but took away a choice collection of bright colors and of mingled fragrance. Here was an ardent lover, all eagerness, who would write his words of devotion to his idol in the alphabet of angels. Now and then an American tourist was seen to carry away an armful of bouquets to bestow with impartial hand among his lady friends. Looking on at the suggestive scene is a scantily-clad Indian girl, with a curious hungry expression upon her face. Is it flowers or food that she craves? She shall have both. How rich the color of her cheek; how eloquent the expression of her dark eyes; how grateful her hesitating smile, as she receives from the stranger a piece of silver and a cluster of flowers!
On the open space in front of the cathedral a sort of daily fair is held, where a most incongruous trade is carried on amid great confusion; but there are no more male and female slaves offered for sale here, as in the days of the Spanish victors. Slavery existed both under Aztec and Spanish rule; but it was abolished, as an institution, soon after the establishment of Mexican independence. The match boys, lottery-ticket venders, fruit men, ice-cream hawkers, cigar and cigarette dealers, and candy women (each with a baby tied to her back), rend the air with their harsh and varied cries, while the stranger is quickly discovered, and importuned to the verge of endurance. We were told that this army of hawkers and peddlers were allowed just in the shadow of the church by special permit, a percentage of the benefit derived from the sales accruing to the priests, who carry on their profession inside the walls of the grand and beautiful edifice, where a less noisy, but quite as commercial a performance is going on all the while, "indulgences" being bartered and sold to moneyed sinners nearly every hour of the day.
The principal market-place has always been near the plaza, at its southwest end, a single block away; but a new and more spacious one is in course of erection at this writing, progress being made in the usual mañana style. Sunday morning is the great market day of the week, the same as in all Mexican cities, when there is here a confusion of tongues that would silence the hubbub of the Paris Bourse. How a legitimate business can be accomplished under such circumstances is a marvel. Each line of trade has its special location, but confusion reigns supreme.
In passing through the Calle de San Francisco, we were struck with the difference of temperature between the sunny and the shady sides of the street. It must have been fully ten degrees. One becomes uncomfortably warm while walking in the sunshine, but upon crossing into the shade he is quickly chilled by the frostiness of the still, dry atmosphere and a realizing sense of dampness beneath his feet. "Only dogs and Americans walk on the sunny side," say the Mexicans. To this we can only answer by commending the discretion of both men and beasts. In the early evening, as soon as the sun sets, the natives begin to wrap up their throats and faces, even in midsummer. Yet they seem to avoid the sun while it shines in the middle of the day.
In New Zealand and Alaska, when two natives meet each other and desire to express pleasure at the circumstance, they rub their noses together. In Mexico, if two gentlemen meet upon the street or elsewhere after a considerable absence, they embrace cordially and pat each other on the back in the most demonstrative manner, just as two parties fall on each other's neck in a stage embrace. To a cool looker-on this seemed rather a waste of the raw material, taking place between two individuals of the same sex. In Japan, two persons on meeting in public begin bowing their bodies until the forehead nearly touches the ground, repeating this movement a score of times. In China, two gentlemen who meet greet each other by shaking their own left hand in their right. In Norway and Sweden, the greeting is made by taking off and replacing the hat half a dozen times; the greater number of times, the more cordial is the greeting considered; but in Mexico it is nothing more nor less than an embrace with both arms.
The carrying of concealed weapons is prohibited by law in the United States and some other countries, but in Mexico a statute is not permitted to be simply a dead letter. While we were at the Iturbide, the police of the capital were vigorously enforcing a new law, which forbids the carrying of any sort of deadly weapon except in open sight. The common people were being searched for knives, of which, when found, they were instantly deprived, so that at one of the police stations there was a pile of these articles six feet high and four wide. They were in all manner of shapes, short and long, sharp and dull, daggerlike or otherwise, but all worn for the purpose either of assault or defense. They came from the possession of the humble natives, who could not plead that they kept them for domestic uses or for eating purposes, since they use neither knife nor fork in that process. We were told that this wholesale seizure had been going on for a month or more, the police stopping any person whom they chose in order to search them in the street. Such a thing as resistance is not thought of by a peon; he knows that it is of no sort of use, and will be the cause of sending him to prison immediately. Quarrels at low drinking places are no longer followed by the use of knives. It was the frequency of these assaults which filled the hospitals with victims and caused the passage of a law which meets the exigencies of the case. The fine for carrying concealed weapons is heavy, besides involving the penalty of imprisonment. A certain class of persons coming from out of the city are permitted to carry revolvers, but they must be in a belt and in full sight. Probably no municipal law was ever more thoroughly enforced than this of disarming the common class of this city.
The tramway facilities are so complete in the city of Mexico that one has very little occasion to employ hackney coaches. Sometimes, however, these will be found, if not absolutely necessary, yet a great convenience. The legal charges are very moderate, and may well be so, for the entire turnout is usually of a most broken-down character,—poor horses, or mules, a stupid driver, and a dirty interior, with such a variety of offensive smells as to cause one to enter into an analysis to decide which predominates. One dollar an hour is the average charge made for these vehicles, the driver expecting, as in similar cases in Paris, Berlin, or elsewhere, a trifle as a pourboire at the end of the service for which he is engaged. Where these ruinous structures which pass for public carriages originally came from is a conundrum; but there can be no possible doubt as to their antiquity. Mexican fleas, like those of Naples and continental Spain, are both omnivorous and carnivorous, and these vehicles are apt to be itinerant asylums for this pest of the low latitudes. There are three grades of hackney coaches in the capital, those comparatively decent, another class one degree less desirable, and a third into which one will get when compelled to do so, not otherwise. Each of these grades is designated by a small metal sign in the shape of a flag, of a certain color, and the charges are graduated accordingly. As to the drivers, they are not such outright swindlers as those of their tribe in New York, nor by any means so tidy and intelligent as those of Boston.