enient as it is, the serape is as much tabooed among the
"respectable" classes in the cities as the rest of the national
costume. I recollect going one evening after dark to the house of our
friends in the Calle Seminario with my serape on, and nearly having to
fight it out with the great dog Nelson, who was taking charge of his
master's room. Nelson knew me perfectly well, and had sat that very
morning at the hotel-gate for half an hour, holding my horse, while a
crowd of leperos stood round, admiring his size and the gravity of his
demeanour as he sat on the pavement, with the bridle in his mouth. But
that a man in a serape should come into his master's room at dusk was a
thing he could not tolerate, till the master himself came in, and
satisfied his mind on the subject.

As I said, the equipment of ourselves and our three horses took us into
a variety of strange places, for we bought the things we wanted piece
by piece, when we saw anything that suited us. Among other places we
went to the Baratillo, which is the Rag-Fair and Petticoat Lane of
Mexico, and moreover the emporium for whips, bridles, bits, old spurs,
old iron, and odds and ends generally. The little shops are arranged in
long lines, after the manner of the eastern bazaar; and the
shopkeepers, when they are not smoking cigarettes outside, are sitting
in their little dens, within arms-length of all the wares they have to
sell. Here we found what we had come for, and much more too, in the way
of wonderful old spurs, combs, boxes, and ornaments; so that we came
several times more before we left the country, and never without
carrying away some curious old relic.

Mexico, as everybody knows, is decidedly a thievish place. The shops
are all shut at dark, after the _Oracion_, for fear of thieves. Ladies
used to wear immense tortoise-shell combs at the back of their heads,
where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade
for thieves to ride on horseback through the streets, and pull out the
combs as they went, the fashion had to be given up. These curiously
carved and ornamented combs are still preserved as curiosities, and we
bought several of them.

While we were in Mexico, they knocked a man down in the great square at
noon-day, robbed him, and left him there for dead. The square is so
large, and the sun was so hot, that the police--whose head-quarters are
under the arches in that very square--could not possibly walk across to
see wha