wheel steamers of antiquated design. All classes carry passengers, with their donkeys and dogs, these latter being indispensable accompanists to the passenger, since each is an owner of part of the cargo of wood, charcoal or garden truck, and must have the burro to make a delivery at the port of destination, and the dog-well, the dog just goes along from force of habit, or an innate aversion to being left behind, and alone, because the family comes to town with its head and the house is closed till they return. One of these long, low, rakish craft from the other shores of Chalco and Xochimilco is a sight to see, at once a freighter and a floating menagerie, as there are other live stock besides the dogs and donkeys, in the shape of goats, sheep, ducks, and chickens. The boats bring the provender for man and beast in a city of nearly half a million of people, and largely supply the city with fuel, the boats bringing it to the landing places and the burros making the delivery throughout the city.

But there are boats for passengers, and for tourists to Santa Anita, Mexicalcingo, San Juanico, Ixtacalco, and las chinampas, the floating gardens. These boats are a Mexican edition of the gondola, and with a Mexican gondolier in the bow, using a pole instead of a paddle. These gondolas are as picturesque in a way as the Venetian sort, not as graceful, perhaps, but sui generis, in a class of their own, a wide, flat bottom batteau, like an old-fashioned country ferryboat; there are low seats on each side running lengthwise, from end to end, under a canopy with gaudy-colored curtains.

start on the voyage does not impress favorably, proceeds it grows interesting, especially after

where the municipal duties were freighters; thence the wide, open er little craft, the long, narrow I there among the larger ones, the h their passengers squatted unde

the grass-woven canopies, and the larger boats coming from or going to Xochimilco and Chalco with their cargoes of men, women, children, burros, dogs, wood, charcoal and garden truck; then there are little bumboat canoes with dusky "Little Buttercups" to come alongside your boat, with the cleanest-looking baskets covered with the whitest of drawn-work cloths, under which are the native sandwiches, tortillas, tamales, con carne or con dulce, that, no matter how they may have seemed elsewhere, here look temptingly toothsome. Any day will do for the voyage to Santa Anita and much will be seen that you never saw before, but on a Sunday or a feast day there will be more life on the canal and in the villages.

VILLAGE OF SANTA ANITA

Santa Anita is a straggling village of thatched houses, a relic of primitive times almost under the shadow of the towers of the metropolitan city, a pleasure resort of the middle and lower classes, where every house is an open one, fonda, restaurant or pulque shop, with thatched bowers over the seats and tables of the revellers.

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"When your boat is anchored under a great tree at Santa Anita," says Mr. Reau Campbell, “ go ashore and pass up the street from the canal to the little old church and beyond to a forlorn little plaza, where there are some swings and some more fondas and pulque shops, and you will find the canoes to take you through the sluices of the floating gardens. These gardens have no walks and must be floated through, which would entitle them to their name, even if they were not really floating gardens, as they were in the olden times when the chinampas grew the fruits and flowers for Montezuma and the Aztec tzins; now they are flower and vegetable beds to supply the city markets. It is worth the while of the trip if it were only to see the acres and acres of poppies, whence the natives garland themselves and their

houses on feast days, and of which you may bring away a boat load for a real.

"On the going or the return trip a stop should be made at the hacienda of Juan Corona. While he lived, Don Juan's house was yours; his was a hospitable roof, and it remains to-day in happy memory with open doors. Don Juan was a great man in his day, as valiant as he was good and charitable, not a soldier, nor yet padre or a missionary; his life was full of brave deeds and good works. Don Juan was a bull-fighter on Sundays and feast days, and a philanthropist all the week, as if he would make six days of charity balance his account of questionable sport on Sunday. His pleasure was the care of the children of the poor, till he was called the father of the destitute, when he established a school for his wards that is still maintained in one of the rooms of his house. The old Don's hobby was less of tauromachy than the collection of curios, and his house is a monument to the memory of that hobby; every room is a museum in itself. Pass through the open door; no invitation is needed, and there is none to stop your way. Within the patio of trees, flowers and climbing vines is a stone stairway leading to an upper gallery; the curios commence on the stairway and continue through all the house. Pass around the gallery to the far side of the patio and enter through the kitchen, the quaintest, cleanest kitchen in the world; then through the dining-room, bed chamber and parlor, coming out again onto the gallery at the stairs, where you may enter the schoolroom and see a school wholly unlike any other. As a visitor enters, the bright little beneficiaries of Corona's bounty rise in respectful salutation and welcome. The school has not the ample means it had in the life of good old Don Juan, and any offering is not only to a worthy charity, but a tribute to the memory of a good man.

"It will take longer to see all in the quaint old house than to write it down, since it is impossible to do it com

pletely. In the kitchen is the old-fashioned cookingplace built of brick, around it and on all the walls are the utensils of earthenware, and in the dining-room the table and its appurtenances are as quaintly curious. But it is in the other rooms where are the curios and relics, of every age and era of Mexico's history back to prehistoric times; idols from the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon at San Juan Teotihuacan; weapons, plumes, shields and war dresses of the Aztecs, a cigar case, pistol and sword of the patriot-priest Hidalgo; the bed in which General Santa Anna died; some pieces from the table service of the Emperor Maximilian and one of the muskets with which he was shot; the rifle of General Miramon used at Queretaro; a fine collection of chicaras, chocolate cups painted by the Indians of Michoacan; very curious and ancient costumes of the bull-ring, among which is one used by the Spanish matador, Bernardo Gavino, when he was killed in the ring at Texcoco; ancient Chinese and Japanese armor; paintings of religious subjects and scenes from the bull ring; portraits of Don Juan and his wife and of Mexican celebrities; a collection of bird eggs, stuffed animals, two immense bowls or platters with the portraits of Maximilian and Carlotta; old tapestries and silken shawls; rugs of the skins of wild beasts, and a thousand and one other curious things collected in a long lifetime, of which no complete list or description may be made, but each article is in its place just as Don Juan left them when he died."

CHAPTER XV

A MEXICAN BULLFIGHT

Bullfighting is still by far the most popular amusement of Mexico. The spirit of tauromachy inherited from old Spain lives in the modern bull ring or Plaza de Toros, according to Mr. Reau Campbell, the noted traveler, whose graphic description of the methods of the "cruel sport" is reproduced below.

An honest effort has been made by the government to stop the sport by the enactment of laws interdicting the functions in the federal district and other metropolitan localities, but the laws were repealed as often as enacted, so great was the pressure of popular demand from the masses, and notwithstanding the influence and example of non-attendance of the best people, the Plaza de Toros is easily the most liberally patronized amusement in Mexico.

"The better the day the better the deed " may not be a Mexican maxim, but the better days are given over to the bull fight. Sundays and feast days are chosen, and on no other day are the plazas open.

The Plaza de Toros is the bull ring- a great circular building of stone or wood with an interior that is an immense amphitheater seating thousands of people. The seats are in tiers rising to the top where the private boxes are, and as there is no roof except over the outer circle shading the boxes, there is a shady side called "sombra" and a sunny side, " sol," with prices in accordance with the location, from 25 to 50 cents in the sun and $1 to $3 in the shade, the private boxes with