File:The ancient cities of the New World - being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882 (1887) (14779823581).jpg

Identifier: ancientcitiesofn00char (find matches)
Title: The ancient cities of the New World : being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Charnay, Désiré, 1828-1915
Subjects: Indians of Mexico Indians of Central America
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ntiful among the Mayas, who have inter-spersed their country with so many remarkable monuments,and whose building aptitude is notable even at the presentday. Beside these edifices the town, with very few exceptions,is an assemblage of low houses having but the ground floor,while all the windows are stoutly grated to secure the inmatesagainst housebreakers. But the impression produced by thisunpromising exterior soon gives place to agreeable surpriseon being introduced into spacious apartments opening on thepatio, encompassed by Moorish cloisters. The patios areplanted with flowers, shrubs, and palm-trees, which, towering 276 The Ancient Cities of the New World. above the terraced roofs, break the monotonous Hnes of thetown iDanorama. Our cut shows Don Alvaro Peons housewith its charming gallery on the first floor. All movement and life centre towards the market-place,where Spaniards, Indians, and Meztizos are seen in theirpicturesque costumes ; sellers are crying out their goods, con-
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DON ALVARO IEON S HOUSE. sisting of pottery and baskets, the facsimiles of those webought at Tula ; somewhat further we come across somenatives bending undc^r heavy loads of ramon, the greentwigs of a particular tree, affording the only forage in acountry without grass. liere young caballeros are stopped bycumbrous carts taking up the whole street with their enormousbales of henequcn ; further on, women in snowy white costumes Yucatan, Merida, and the Mava Race. 277 sit in long rows, offering with 11 pretty grace their smallstock-in-trade spread before them. Among this motley crowdI spied a diminutive aguador looking so bonnie that I wished ■>5S.-*K5»5fSg!%

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