It was a rare sight in the bright mornings of June, this Piazza of Puebla. Hundreds of Indian girls seated in groups under their awnings of “petates,” gayly chatting with one another, or laughing with a clear ringing laugh at the bad Spanish of the American soldier. Who says that the Indians of Mexico are a dejected race? No such thing. We have seen more bright happy faces in the markets of Puebla than any where else. The slightest witticism—a mispronunciation of the names of any of their wares by a foreign tongue, will elicit peals of laughter from these merry market-girls, while the almost constant display of their small pearly teeth and sparkling eyes evinces the lightness of their hearts. [Illustration: THE WOUNDED GUERILLA Engraved by Rice] The remnants of several nations exist in the plains of Puebla. These may be easily distinguished in the streets of the city by a singular custom. A few strands of worsted thread, blue, crimson, or purple, are twisted into the plaits of their luxuriant black hair. The difference of color in this worsted marks the tribe or village to which the wearer belongs, so that at a glance you may tell an Indian girl from Tlaxcalla or San Pablo from one of the Cholultecas. The Indians of the last mentioned tribe are perhaps the most interesting to be met with in Mexico. Living at the foot of the great pyramid, on “haunted holy ground,” they are constantly reminded of the religion of their fathers, many of whose peculiar customs and habits they still preserve in all their pristine simplicity. The young girls of this tribe are strikingly handsome, and but for their malformation—the effect of early toil and careless rearing—the Cholultecas, with their dark Indian eyes and pearly teeth, would far eclipse with their beauty the daughters of the famed Castilian conquerors. Of all the Indian maidens who visited the Piazza of Puebla, none attracted more admiration from the officer or soldier who thronged through this market than two sisters from Cholula. These girls were named Remedios and Dolores, after the appellations of two of the most popular saints in Mexico. The elder, Remedios, was strikingly beautiful, and though admired by all, her dark Indian eye had made a deeper impression upon the heart of a young Ranger. The occupation of these girls was that of weaving baskets from the fine fibres of the _palma redonda_, which wares, along with the flowers that grew in their little garden at Cholula, they brought once or twice a week to the city.