gold and silver lace embroidery, to the height of five hundred dollars and over. Not so the ladies' mantle. The highest-priced reboza I have seen was worth fifteen to twenty dollars, and was a plain light-blue, checked, not looking a whit better in color than a blue checked calico of a ten-cent valuation, but of course soft and fine. It has also an edging of stiffened netting, a quarter of a yard wide, which is a sign of its aristocratic rank.
The men are not content with their radiant zarepe. They essay the sombrero in silver and gold. Broad, light gray-and-white felts are faced with broad silver lace, and fantastically wrought. They have bands of silver swollen into a snake-like form around the bottom of the crown; also buttons and stars of silver. They are often very costly and ornate.
Then come their pantaloons of leather, if they are on horseback, with a row of silver or brass buttons, close packed from pocket to heel, on the seam of either leg. The extra-fashionable adorn this garment by fancy facings on back and legs, set in very prettily, and making that rude patch of our childhood and of many a manhood a really handsome ornament.
It is but proper to say that the ubiquitous European is changing these fashions, and that more soft hats and silk hats after the New York and Paris fashions are seen to-day on the plazas of all the chief cities than the magnificently gotten-up sombreros, while the zarepe is almost entirely remanded to the working-classes. Even the brimless hats, with their towering feathers and flowers and lace, are replacing modest lace veils and black shawls for church, and blue rebozas; and Mexico will soon, I fear, be undistinguishable in dress from New York.
The mines have created this city, and still enrich it. They are located in the hills behind and above the town. Humboldt reckoned that one-fifth of the silver of the world had come from one mine here, and the yield now is five millions a year. They are worked on shares—the laborer half, the owner half. These "diggings" are carried to the reduction haciendas, as grain is carried to a mill, and are either sold to the haciendados, or reduced by
