With the exception of Buenos Ayres and Santiago, Chili, the city of Mexico is the largest and the finest capital in Spanish America; but unfortunately the shadow of the sixteenth century still rests upon it. It wounds the pride of the Yankee tourist to discover that so little of our boasted influence has lapped over the border, and that the historic halls of the Montezumas are only spattered with the modern ideas we exemplify. The native traveller still prefers his donkey to the railroad train, and carries a burden upon his back instead of using a wagon. Water is still peddled about the capital of Mexico in jars, and the native farmer uses a plough whose pattern was old in the days of Moses. Nowhere do ancient and modern customs come into such intimate contrast as in the city of Mexico. The people are highly civilized in spots. Besides the most novel and recent product of modern science, one finds in use the crudest, rudest implement of antiquity. Types of four centuries can be seen in a single group in any of the plazas. Under the finest palaces, whose ceilings are frescoed by Italian artists, whose walls are covered with the rarest paintings, and shelter libraries selected with the choicest taste, one finds a common _bodega_, where the native drink is dealt out in gourds, and the _peon_ stops to eat his _tortilla_. Women and men are seen carrying upon their heads enormous burdens through streets lighted by electricity, and stop to ask through a telephone where their load shall be delivered. [Illustration: IT WAS USED IN THE DAYS OF MOSES.]