for a
Chino? _Es posible?_ Is it possible?" cried he, tearing open his jacket,
and producing from a small silver case a dirty bit of paper, which he held
up in triumph. "See, here, senorias, '_Que se tenga por blanco!_'"[17]

"_Que se tenga por blanco!_" yelled a hundred, and soon a thousand,
Leperos, roaring with laughter. And then dancing round him in a circle,
they again vociferated, "_Que se tenga por blanco!_"

The ragged Zambo, who, in his day-dream of ambition, had selected a
countess for his cupbearer, did not seem disposed easily to give up his
claims to a white skin. He gazed for a moment at the mad antics and
grimaces of the filthy and ugly mob by which he was surrounded, and then
again vociferated, "_Io soy blanco, y todo blanco es caballero!_"

"A rascally thief from Vera Cruz, that is what you are," was the retort;
"a sand-fly that would fain creep in and make its nest amongst us."

"I will show you who has the most power, your Vicente Guerero, or Cassio
Isidro," cried the Zambo. "I will let you know it," added he, his hands
stuck in his sides as if in defiance, "and before ten months are past, I
will have Vicente Guerero for my muleteer."

The Zambo's cup was filled to overflowing by this last piece of
presumption, and a thousand Indians, forgetting their sloth and apathy,
sprang forward to seize and punish the man who had dared to speak lightly
of one of the greatest heroes of the Revolution, the representative of the
interests of the coloured races. But the Zambo was far more nimble than
the sluggish Leperos, and his speed of foot, and active bounds over the
heaps of lava, enabled him to laugh at the pursuit and menaces of those
zealous partisans of the illustrious Vicente Guerero.

* * * * *

This kind of familiar, not to say profane, adaptation of the Scriptures to
the comprehension of the lowest and most ignorant classes, for the
furtherance of a political or other temporal object, is not altogether
without example amongst the priesthood of some European countries.

We pass on to a midday scene in the city of Mexico. There had been a
disturbance, followed by some menacing demonstrations on the part of the
authorities; and the streets, instead of being silent and entirely
deserted, as is usually the case in Mexico during the first three hours of
the afternoon, were traversed by numerous passengers. The following
picture of a Spanish-American interior, is peculiar