When, However, I Told Them Of Electric Cars And Underground Railways, They Turned Away In Incredulity, Thinking That Such Marvels As These Could Not Possibly Be.

Old World towns they seem to be.

The houses are built of sun-baked mud bricks, kneaded by mares that splash and trample through the oozy substance for hours to mix it well. The poorer people build ranches of long, slender canes or Indian cornstalks tied together by grass and coated with mud. These are all erected around and about the most imposing edifice in the place - the whitewashed adobe church.

All houses are hollow squares. The patio, with its well, is inside this enclosure. Each house is lime-washed in various colors, and all are flat-roofed and provided with grated windows, giving them a prison-like appearance. The window-panes are sometimes made of mica. Over the front doors of some of the better houses are pictures of the Virgin. The nurse's house is designated by having over the doorway a signboard, on which is painted a full-blooming rose, out of the petals of which is peeping a little babe.

If you wish to enter a house, you do not knock at the door (an act that would be considered great rudeness), but clap your hands, and you are most courteously invited to enter. The good woman at once sets to work to serve you with mate, and quickly rolls a cigar, which she hands to you from her mouth, where she has already lighted it by a live ember of charcoal taken from the fire with a spoon. Matches can be bought, but they cost about ten cents a hundred. If you tell the housewife you do not smoke she will stare at you in gaping wonder. Their children use the weed, and I have seen a mother urge her three-year-old boy to whiff at a cigarette.

Bound each dwelling is a ramada, where grapes in their season hang in luxuriant clusters; and each has its own garden, where palms, peaches, figs, oranges, limes, sweet potatoes, tobacco, nuts, garlic, etc., grow luxuriantly. The garden is surrounded by a hedge of cacti or other kindred plants. The prickly pear tree of that family is one of the strangest I have seen. On the leaves, which are an inch or more in thickness, grows the fruit, and I have counted as many as thirteen pears growing on a single leaf. When ripe they are a deep red color, and very sweet to the taste. The skin is thick, and covered with innumerable minute prickles. It is, I believe, a most refreshing and healthful food.

Meat is very cheap. A fine leg of mutton may be bought for the equivalent of twelve cents, and good beef at four cents a pound. Their favorite wine, Lagrimas de San Juan (Tears of Holy John), can be bought for ten cents a quart.

All cooking is done on braziers - a species of three-legged iron bucket in which the charcoal fire is kindled.

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