CHAPTER II.
IN MOTHER NOAH'S SHOES.[1]
dearth of household furniture and conveniences already mentioned, put ingenuity and will force to their utmost tension, and I felt as if transported to antediluvian days. I have a candid conviction that Mother Noah never had cooking utensils more crude, or a larder more scant, than were mine. It may be, however, that the "old man" was "good to help around the house."
This was before the time of railways in Mexico, the "Nacionai Mexicano" having only penetrated a few leagues west of the Rio Grande. With the primitive modes of transportation which served in lieu of the railway it was not advisable to attempt bringing household goods so far over a trackless country. The inconveniences that followed were not peculiar to ourselves, but common to all strangers, who like us could neither anticipate nor realize the scarcity of every household appurtenance.
The natives who enjoyed the luxury of furniture—and there was a large number who had everything in elegance—had also the romantic recollection, that great old two-wheeled carts, towering almost above the house-tops, had brought it from the capital, nearly a thousand miles, or it was manufactured by the carpenters of the town.
In the division of the apartments of the house, one half was allotted to us, while our friends distributed themselves among the remaining rooms, on the opposite side of the court-yard, the drawing
- ↑ In this, the two succeeding chapters, and wherever the common people are mentioned, the Spanish used is idiomatic, peculiar to the class it represents.
