little slippers and no stockings, and you have as good a picture of a Mexican half-caste girl as I can give. A book of Mexican engravings, however, will give a much better idea of her. Then we went past the great prison, the Acordada, and out at the gate (we had purposely gone out of our way to see more of the city), and so into the great promenade, the Paseo or Alameda. The latter is the Spanish name for this necessary appendage to every town. It comes from _álamo_, which means a poplar. Imagine a long wide level road, a mile or so long, generally so chosen as to have a fine view, with footpaths on each side, lines of poplar trees, a fountain at each end and a statue in the middle, and this description will stand pretty nearly for almost every promenade of the kind I have seen in Spain or Spanish America. [Illustration: Water-carrier and a Mexican Woman, at the Fountain] Tacubaya is a pleasant place on the side of the first hills that begin to rise towards the mountain-wall of the valley. Here rich Mexicans have country-houses in large gardens, which are interesting from the immense variety of plants which grow there, though badly kept up, and systematically stripped by the gardeners of the fruit as it gets ripe—for their own benefit, of course. From Tacubaya we go to Chapultepec (Grasshopper Mountain), which is a volcanic hill of porphyry rising from the plain. On the top is the palace on which the viceroy Galvez expended great sums of money some seventy years ago, making it into a building which would serve either as a palace or as a fortress in cases of emergency. Though the Americans charged up the hill and carried it easily in ’47, it would be a very strong place in proper hands. It is a military school now. On the hill is the famous grove of cypresses—ahuehuetes[5]—as they are called, grand trees with their branches hung with fringes of the long grey Spanish moss—barba Española—Spanish beard. I do not know what painters think of the effect of this moss, trailing in long festoons from the branches of the trees, but to me it is beautiful; and I shall never forget where I first saw it, on a bayou of the Mississippi, winding through the depths of a great forest in the swamps of Louisiana.[6] In this grove of Chapultepec, there were sculptured on the side of the hill, in the solid porphyry, likenesses of the two Montezumas, colossal in size. For some reason or other, I forget now what, one of the last Spanish viceroys thought it desirable to destroy them, and tried to blow them up with gunpowder. He only partially succeeded, for the two great bas-reliefs were still very distinguishable as we rode past, though noseless and considerably knocked about. [5] Ahuehuete, pronounced _a-hwe-hwete_. Thus, Anahuac is pronounced _Ana-hwac;_ and Chihuahua, _Chi-hwa-hwa_.