The Indians here no longer appeared the same dull, melancholy men whom we had seen in the richer quarter of the town.  There they were under a strong feeling of constraint, for their language is not understood by the whites and mestizos; and they, for their part, know but little Spanish; and besides, there is very little sympathy between the two classes.  One thing will shew this clearly enough.  By a distinct line of demarcation, the Indians are separated from the rest of the population, who are at least partly white.  These latter call themselves “gente de razon”—­people of reason,—­to distinguish themselves from the Indians, who are people without reason.  In common parlance the distinction is made thus:  the whites and mixed breed are “gente”—­people,—­the brown men being merely “Indios”—­Indians—­and not people at all.

Here, in their own quarter, and among their own people, they seem talkative enough.  We can only tell what they are chattering about when they happen to speak Spanish, either for our benefit, or to show off their proficiency in that tongue.  People who can speak the Aztec language say that their way of forming compound words gives constant occasion for puns and quibbles, and that the talk of the Indians is full of such small jokes.  In this respect they differ exceedingly from the Spaniards, whose jests are generally about things, and seldom about their names, as one sees by their almost always bearing translation into other languages.

Most of the canoes were tastefully decorated with flowers, for the Aztecs have not lost their old taste for ornamenting themselves, and everything about them, with garlands and nosegays.  The fruits and vegetables they were carrying to market were very English in their appearance.  Mexico is supplied with all kinds of tropical fruits, which come from a distance; but the district we are now in only produces plants which might grow in our own country—­barley, potatoes, cabbages, parsnips, apples, pears, plums, peaches, and so forth, but scarcely anything tropical in its character.  One thing surprises us, that the Indians, in a climate where the mornings and evenings are often very chilly, should dress so scantily.  The men have a general appearance of having outgrown their clothes; for the sleeves of the kind of cotton-shirt they wear only reach to their elbows, and their trousers, of the same material, only fall to their knees.  To these two garments add a sort of blanket, thrown over the shoulders, a pair of sandals, and a palm-leaf hat, and the man is dressed.  His skin is brown, his limbs muscular—­especially his legs—­his lips thick, his nose Jewish, his hair coarse, black, and hanging straight down.  The woman’s dress is as simple as the man’s.  She has on a kind of cotton sack, very short in the sleeves, and very open at the shoulders, and some sort of a skirt or petticoat besides.  Sometimes she has a folded cotton cloth on her head, like a Roman contadina; but, generally, nothing covers her thick black hair, which hangs down behind in long twisted tails.