VAGABOND LIFE
IN
MEXICO.
BY
GABRIEL FERRY,
FOR SEVEN YEARS RESIDENT IN THAT COUNTRY.
NEW YORK.
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1856.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| PERICO, THE MEXICAN VAGABOND | 5 |
| FRAY SERAPIO, THE FRANCISCAN MONK | 47 |
| DON TADEO CRISTOBAL, THE THIEVES' LAWYER OF MEXICO | 90 |
| REMIGIO VASQUEZ | 128 |
| THE MINERS OF RAYAS | 177 |
| CAPTAIN DON BLAS AND THE SILVER CONVOY | 217 |
| THE JAROCHOS | 277 |
| THE PILOT VENTURA | 314 |
VAGABOND LIFE IN MEXICO.
Perico, the Mexican Vagabond.
CHAPTER I.
The Jamaïca and Mount Parnassus.
Mexico is the most beautiful city ever built by the Spaniards in the NewWorld; and even in Europe it would take a high place for splendor andmagnificence. If you wish to behold the magnificent and varied panoramawhich Mexico presents, you have only to mount at sunset one of thetowers of the Cathedral. On whatever side you turn your eye, you seebefore you the serrated peaks of the Cordilleras, forming a giganticazure belt of about sixty leagues in circumference. To the south, thetwo volcanoes which overtop the other peaks of the sierra raise theirmajestic summits, covered with eternal snow, which, in the evening sun,put on a pale purple hue flecked with delicate ruby. The one,Popocatapetl (smoking mountain), is a perfect cone, dazzling in the bluevault of heaven; the other, Iztaczihuatl (the white woman), has theappearance of a nymph reclining, who lifts her icy shoulders to receivethe last beams of the dying sun. At the foot of the two volcanoes gleamtwo lakes, like mirrors, which reflect the clouds in their waters, andwhere the wild swan plays its merry gambols. To the west rises animmense pile of building, the palace of[Pg 6] Chapultepec, once the abode ofthe old viceroys of New Spain. Round the mountain on which it is builtstretches, in a long, waving belt of verdure, a forest of cedars morethan a thousand years old. A fountain bubbles forth at the top of themountain; its brawling waters leap down into the valley, where they arereceived into an aqueduct, and thus conducted into a large and populouscity, to supply the wants of its inhabitants. Villages, steeples, andcupolas rise on all sides from the bottom of the valley. Dusty roadscross and recross one another like gold stripes on a green ground, orlike runnels of water interbranching through the country. A tree,peculiar to Peru, the weeping willow of the sandy plains, bends