plains at Otumba. The avenue is now solid, and Alvarado's famous leap across one of these ditches is an indistinguishable bit of the hard highway. Over the same road marched the American army into town, Scott and Grant and Lee, the known, and the then unknown, being in the little host of later conquerors. If we are seeking a like and larger, bloodless and better, conquest, we can properly pass to our quarters over the same path. It may be ominous of a bloody retreat under the uprisings and assaults of reigning superstition, but it will only thus be prophetic of ultimate and perfect victory.
A parallel street to the central thoroughfare goes out from the western end of the same plaza, and is heavily shaded at the start with covered arcades, like a deep sombrero, behind which shop-men of all sorts ply their trades. It runs straight to the luxurious northern hamlet of Tacubaya. Between these two is the street at whose corner you have been standing. It lies between the green plats of the Plaza and the Alameda, each of which appears at either extremity. This street is the busiest and most fashionable of all in the town. It is half a mile long, forty to fifty feet wide, about three stories high, faced with stone or mortar, but, except three or four buildings, without especial ornament. It bears the names of Calle del Plateros (or Street of the Silversmiths), Calle de Profesa, and Calle de San Francisco. It is, however, one in every respect but its name. They have a way here of giving almost every block a name of its own, which in a long street is as perplexing as the multitude of names given to a royal heir would be if he were called by a different one of them every day.
This street is lively with hackney and private coaches; carts with three mules abreast; burros, or donkeys, with their immense burdens; and men and women with theirs almost equally heavy, the women with rebosas, or blue or brown fine-wove mantles, wrapped about their shoulders, and half hiding the faces; the men with their white blankets with bright-colored borders, or with only their dirty white shirts and trowsers, carrying heavy loads on their trained shoulders.
