nufacture the finest gold chains, surpassing any thing of the kind
that is to be found in Europe. Their statuettes and images of saints are
often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class
became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do
literally nothing, possess nothing, and lie about the streets stark
naked, with the exception of a tattered woollen blanket.]

[Footnote 7: The chapel of the Redeemer of Atolnico is situated on the
summit of a steep and high mountain, two and a half leagues from Miguel
el Grande, and is much resorted to by pilgrims. On the high altar are
statues of the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalen, of solid
silver, studded with rubies and emeralds. There are also in the same
church thirty other altars, with statues as large as life, pillars,
crosses, and candlesticks, all of the same metal. The sums that are each
year offered up at this shrine, are said to amount to considerably more
than one hundred thousand dollars.]

[Footnote 8: A monotonous species of dance.]

[Footnote 9: Creoles are born in Mexico of white parents. The Metises
are the descendants of whites and Indians, the Mulattoes of whites and
Negroes, the Zambos, or Chinos, of Negroes and Indians. The unmixed
races are Spaniards, Creoles, Indians, and Negroes. _Salta-atras_,
literally, a spring backwards, is the term applied to those of whom the
mothers were of a whiter race than the fathers.]

[Footnote 10: The Spaniards, at the period here referred to, (1812,) the
rulers and tyrants of Mexico, were estimated at 60,000 souls, or
one-twentieth of the white population of the country.]

[Footnote 11: Anahuac, the ancient name of Mexico. Mexitli, the god of
war of the Mexicans. Guatemozin, the last Mexican emperor. He was
tortured in the time of Cortes, to induce him to reveal the place where
his treasures were concealed; and subsequently hung for conspiracy, by
order of the same Spanish chief.]

[Footnote 12: One of the three principal prisons in Mexico.]

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine -
Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845, by Various

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