GROUP OF MEXICAN HORSEMEN.
"The mestizo is thus the child of a white father and an Indian mother. He is a magnificent horseman; one might take him for an Arab as, lance in hand, he rushes past upon his light steed. In the warmer regions he wears, on Sundays, a carefully plaited white shirt, wide trousers of white or colored drilling, fastened round the hips by a gay girdle, brown leather gaiters, and broad felt hat, with silver cord or fur band around it. The mestizos include the great majority of the rancheros, or farmers, and the arrieros, or mule-drivers; many of them are educated, and take a leading part in law, politics, and medicine, where they often attain high rank. They are excellent soldiers, especially on horseback, and it is this class of Mexicans that have given the Mexican cavalry its high reputation."
"How about the leperos?" queried Fred. "Don't they belong among the mestizos?"
"Yes," was the reply, "that is what the books I am looking at say of them. They come from the union of the worst of the two races, and are said to possess the vices of both with the good qualities of neither. They are the class from which the thieves and beggars of Mexico are recruited. One writer says, 'A lepero is a thief from infancy, and is able to steal as soon as he leaves his mother's arms.' The Chief of Police says that nine out of ten of the men and boys selling lottery tickets or newspapers on the streets are thieves and pickpockets, and their legitimate business is simply a cloak for the illegal one.
"Another authority says that on the line of the Mexican Railway from Vera Cruz to the capital nothing that two men can lift is left out-of-doors after dark. All car-couplings must be carried into the stations; and the rascals used to steal the spikes that held the rails to the ties until the company adopted the plan of riveting them to the rails after they were driven into place.
"Brantz Meyer tells about an Englishman who was walking along one of the principal streets of Mexico, when he suddenly felt his hat rising from his head. He looked up and saw it sailing towards the window from which the thief had caught it by the dexterous use of a hook.
"Another story that he tells is about a Mexican who was stopped on the road by three others, who robbed him of his cloak. They told him to wait where he was and he would be able to make something by doing so; out of curiosity he waited, and in a little while an accomplice of the thieves came and handed him a pawn ticket. He accompanied the gift with a graceful bow, and explained that the cloak had been pawned for thirty dollars. 'We wanted the money and not the cloak,' the thief explained, 'and as the garment is worth at least a hundred dollars, you can redeem it and make seventy dollars by the transaction.'