workers, mostly Indians, far below us assorting ores. Red and plaid serapes, more than rainbow-hued, were tossed carelessly, but with artistic effect, upon the shoulders of the men, while countless women and children with gay skirts, naked feet, blue rebozos, jetty hair either flowing or in plaits, moved about with unstudied grace. Nature, too, contributed her fairest to the scene. As we whirled around the dizzy height, the train, forming loop after loop, as we headed the frightful barrancas, and circled among the clouds, we saw sparkling waters leaping and dashing from high summits; then the gladdening view, when we had gone higher than the clouds, and beheld a sky more blue than Italy ever boasted! Finally, the salient point of every rustic scene, the lavendaras, with their flowing black hair and red petticoats, washing along the mountain streams, filled the landscape with peasant life and homely color. Our spiral windings around this mountain can be compared to nothing less than a revolving panorama, in which both the object and spectator moved. Once seen it is never forgotten.
Thirty miles southwest of Zacatecas, at Quemada, are interesting ruins, supposed to mark one of the resting places of the Aztecs in their march to the valley of Mexico. A citadel is in the center of a walled inclosure containing about six acres, with still an outer wall of unhewn stone, eight feet thick and eighteen feet high. Several pyramids and immense pillars are also within the inclosure.
Aguas Calientes ("Hot Waters") derives its name from the medicinal springs in its vicinity. The waters are extremely efficacious in rheumatism and skin diseases. For centuries people have resorted to them, and still their virtues are undiminished.
There are two sets of bath-houses —the old, in the town, to which the water is conveyed in conduits; the new, a half-mile distant at the springs. Street-cars run out to them through an avenue of cottonwood trees, extending along an acequia (ditch) which carries away the waste waters from the springs.
The common people avail themselves of the open acequia, to freely indulge in the customary luxury of the bath. A fine view
