IV.
A SILVER AND A SACRED TOWN.
Native Costume.—Reboza and Zarepe.—The Sombrero.—A Reduction Hacienda.—The Church in Guanajuato.—Its Antipodes.—A clerical Acquaintance.—A mulish Mule.—"No quiere."—The Landscape.—Lettuce.—Calzada.—The Town and Country.—Fish of the Fence.—The Cactus and the Ass.—Compensation.—One-story City.—High Mass and higher Idolatry.—The God Mary.
Dust off, and clothes changed, let us go out and look at the city. The streets are full of people. This is a festa day, the day of St. Joseph, and nobody is at work. The folks are out in their best array of reboza and zarepe. The reboza is the mantle of the ladies, and their weakness; the zarepe that of the gentlemen, and one of their weaknesses. For sexes, like every thing else here, go by the contraries to what they do elsewhere, and men are much more dressy than women. The reboza is always quiet in color, black, blue, and brown being the prevailing tints. It is a thin-wove, light cotton mantle, some three yards long and three-quarters wide, which is worn over the head and shoulders in an easy and graceful manner. It is the only adornment they possess, apart from the pleasant faces that beam from within it, and which are as good-looking, that is, look as good, as their whiter sisters here or elsewhere.
The men are more set forth. They essay the zarepe. I do not find this word in my lexicon, but suppose that is the way to spell it. This is a thick shawl of many colors, sometimes striped in red, yellow, green, blue, and white; sometimes with light centre and embroidered edges. They muffle up their face, and wrap their shoulders in this gay shawl even in the hottest days. It is their pride. Some of them cost two or three hundred dollars, and they rise, with
