and clay being the principal ones, though one may also find many other specimens of curious and ingenious handicraft.
Everything and everybody took on a holiday look in their new clothes, which none had omitted except the Indians. The azoteas were also enlivened by thousands of people, who enjoyed the brilliant display of pyrotechnics, and every imaginable species of illumination.
A party of Americans of which I was one, with a few Mexican friends, went to Guadalupe the night before the grand fiesta was to take place. To adequately describe the scene would require the pen of a Dickens. The poor, the lame, the halt, the blind had been here congregated, as well as the hale and hearty, with their petates, vessels of pottery and other things needful for the occasion. While the architectural beauty of the cathedral was displayed, the grotesquely attired multitude was also thrown into relief.
Inside the inclosure of the church the stillness of death marked the sleeping multitude. Overcome, perhaps, by the fatigue of the long journey from their homes, hundreds of women and children slept peacefully, undisturbed by the gaze of the curious foreigners who stepped over them to enter the portals of the cathedral.
It seemed to me that hundreds of poor women, wrapped only in their rebozos, with occasionally a blanket, were asleep, and in their immovable postures transfixed to mother earth. Now and then one might be seen upon her knees, devoutly offering up the prayers of her faith, while tears stole gently down the weather-beaten faces of others. Here as everywhere, making himself conspicuous and well known, was the ever-present, insatiable papoose.
Within the cathedral, the soft tones of the organ, aided and enhanced by the youthful voices of the choristers, filled the vast temple with solemn harmony.
An indescribable multitude of worshipers had assembled there, among whom Indian women on their knees, with candles in their hands, and children strapped to their backs, moved down the grand old aisles murmuring their "Ave Marias. "
