LETTER IX.
THE CITY OF MEXICO.
When a traveller arrives in an European city, nothing is easier than to find at once every species of accommodation for his comfort. Indeed, it is not necessary to seek them. He can scarcely walk a square in any of the capitals without being attracted by inviting labels, which promise splendid apartments and every luxury requisite in this age of elegance and ease.
Not so in Mexico. The Hotel Vergara, at which I first descended, though kept by a most courteous lady, who does all in her power to render her guests comfortable, is but a miserable establishment compared even with our most ordinary inns. It is but a small remove from the Fondas and Mesones of the olden time in Mexico. This arises from the fact that travelling is only of a recent date; a new invention as it were, in Mexico. In former times, articles of merchandise were sent under the care of Arrieros, who were satisfied with the accommodation of the ordinary tavern, to wit: four walls, covered with a roof, in which they might stretch their mats, pile their saddles, and sleep—living, the while, on tortillias, onions, pulque and jerked meats. Whenever the better classes found it needful to visit the Capital, the house of some friend was open to them, and thus, hospitality prevented the creation of an honest race of Bonifaces to welcome the weary wayfarer.
I soon became tired of my comfortless apartment, for which an extravagant price was charged, and betook myself to furnished rooms in a French Hotel, called the "Gran Sociedad," where, for about seventy dollars a month, I got a flea-haunted bed—space enough for my books and papers—a broad balcony shielded from the sun by a fanciful curtain—and two Frenchified meals per day, from a restaurateur kept in the same building.
Here I tarried six months, until, tired in turn of the discomforts and expense, I went to housekeeping in a set of apartments with the American Consul. We took a portion of the first floor of a dwelling in the Calle Vergara, belonging to an ex-Marquesa, to whom, and to her worthy son, I must bear the testimony of a grateful heart for unwearied kindness in sickness and in health. The residence was one of the pleasantest, for its size, I know in Mexico. The entrance is into a paved yard, around which the house is built, with its apartments looking into the court from
