height of the second story, reaching from one balcony to another. Small
pyramids were raised for them and of them in the open squares. People
carried hoops of Judases elevated on the top of a long pole. Some men
had a single large figure with the conventional Judas face dressed in
harlequin colors. Everybody on the streets had at least one toy Judas,
and some had a dozen.

Finally, at ten o'clock on the forenoon of Judas day, the great bell of
the cathedral sounds, a score of other church bells follow suit, and the
matches are applied to the fuses with which each emblematic figure is
supplied. Young Mexico is almost crazed. Old Mexico approves and
participates. Everybody is elated to the highest point. Sidewalks and
balconies are crowded with both sexes. Senoras and senoritas are
hilarious, and little children clap their hands. The noise of the bells
is great, that of firecrackers, rockets, and fuses is greater, and the
shouts of the excited multitude who swarm about the Plaza Mayor is the
greatest of all. People become mentally intoxicated with intense
excitement. The large Judases in exploding go to pieces, first losing
one arm, then a leg, followed by another arm, until at last the body
bursts into fragments, at which one universal shout rends the air. The
small Judases keep up their snapping and explosions for an hour or more.
At last Judas is utterly demolished, literally done for. Then the bells
cease ringing, and the overwrought people gradually subside. The whole
is a queer, strange piece of ludicrous mockery, ending as a good-natured
annual frolic.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Santa Rosalia.--Mineral Springs.--Chihuahua.--A Peculiar City.--Cathedral.
--Expensive Bells.--Aqueduct.--Alameda.--Hidalgo's Prison and his
Fate.--Eulalia.--A Large State.--A Grand Avenue of Trees.--Local
Artists.--Grotesque Signs.--Influence of Proximity to the United
States.--Native Villages.--Dangerous Sand-Spouts.--Reflections on
Approaching the Frontier.--Pleasant Pictures photographed upon the
Memory.--Juarez, the Border Town of Mexico.--City of El Paso, Texas.
--Railroad Interests.--Crossing the Rio Grande.--Greeted by the Stars
and Stripes.

Santa Rosalia is a quiet, quaint old place, with six or seven thousand
inhabitants; but, being on the direct line of the Mexican Central
Railroad, it is sure to rapidly increase in numbers and in material
prosperity. Though it is now scarcely more than a countr