"Add to this motley crowd, men dressed à la Mexicaine, with large ornamented hats and serapes, or embroidered jackets, sauntering along, smoking their cigars; léperos, in rags, Indians in blankets, officers in uniform, priests in their shovel hats, monks of every order; Frenchmen exercising their wit upon the passers-by; Englishmen looking on, cold and philosophical; Germans gazing through their spectacles, mild and mystical; Spaniards, seeming pretty much at home, abstaining from remarks; and it may be conceived that the scene, at least, presents variety.
"Suddenly the tinkling of a bell announces the approach of Nuestro Amo (the Host). Instantly the whole crowd are on their knees, crossing themselves devoutly. Disputes are hushed, flirtations arrested, and to the busy hum of voices succeeds a profound silence, filled only by the rolling of coach-wheels and the sound of the little bell."
This scene is almost the same to-day in the public square on Good-Friday. The costumes of the higher class have now surrendered to conventional Paris models, but there is a tendency to gaudiness and display, defying fashion, which makes a Mexican crowd bright with variegated color.
Madame Calderon's accounts of the unsettled state of the country are comforting, as showing the immense advance in this respect, in the forty years since she was in Mexico.
Describing an hacienda not far from the capital, she says: "It is under the charge of an administrador, who receives from its owner a large annual sum, and whose place is by no means a sinecure, as he lives in perpetual danger from robbers. He is captain of a troop of soldiers, and as his life has been spent in persecuting robbers, he is an object of intense hatred to that free and independent body. He gave us a terrible account of night attacks from these men and of his ineffectual attempts to bring them to justice. He lately told the President that he thought of joining the robbers himself, as they were the only persons in the Republic protected by government."
"This pestilence of robbers," she says, "which infests the Republic, has never been eradicated. They are, in fact, the outgrowth of the civil war. Sometimes, in the guise of insurgents, taking an active part in the independence, they have independently laid waste the country, robbing all they met. As expellers of the Spaniards, these armed bands infested the roads between Vera Cruz and the capital, ruined all commerce, and without any particular inquiry into political opinions, robbed and murdered in all directions. Whatever measures have been from time to time taken to eradicate this evil, its causes remain, and the idle and unprincipled will always take advantage of the disorganized state of the country to obtain by force what they might gain by honest labor."
Frequent crosses by the roadside were marks of murders committed by these highwaymen, yet the Mexican robbers had the reputation of being kind and considerate bandits. She relates, as a proof of their occasional moderation, that some ladies "were travelling from Mexico with a padre, when they were met by a party of robbers, who stopped the coach, and seized every thing, amongst other articles of value, a number of silver dishes. The padre observed to them that as the plate did not belong to the ladies, but was lent them by a friend, they would be obliged to replace it, and requested that one might be left as a pattern. The reasonable creatures instantly returned one dish and a cover.
"Another time, having completely stripped an English gentleman and his servant, and tied them both to a tree, observing that the man appeared distressed at the loss of his master's shoes, they politely returned and laid the shoes beside the gentleman."
This drawback to Mexican travel, the terrible bug-bear which still deters many timid people from venturing themselves in the country, has ceased to exist since the establishment of real law and order in the Republic, and especially since railroads have penetrated all the important parts of the country. The Guardias Rurales, a mounted troop of patrols, is now one of the finest military organizations in the world. It is said that General Diaz sent for the chiefs of brigandage, notorious leaders of pillaging bands, and after inquiring how much they earned on an average by their profession, asked them if they had any objection to receiving that sum honestly, in a settled income. The result was the organization, out of this material, of a body of guards to protect the rural districts. They are stalwart men, with splendid leather suits and gray sombreros, all ornamented with silver. Their horses are beautiful animals, all of the same color in one band, handsomely caparisoned. The men ride well, and the effect of this strong body, united in the defence of order, instead of lurking apart in defiance of it, is in the highest degree reassuring. The result is satisfactory. Tales of highway robbery are relegated to the same shadowy region as the legends of Aztec atrocities. In the northern, desolate regions of Mexico, murders and robberies are still perpetrated. It is often the case that these are committed by other races than Mexicans, and very seldom, in proportion, can they be charged upon Indians.