The city is full of fine big shops whose large windows present lavish displays of sumptuous fabrics. There is great wealth in Mexico. There is also abject poverty. The income of the rich comes to them without toil from their vast estates, often inherited in direct descent from the Royal Grants of Ferdinand and Isabella to the _Conquestadores_ of Cortez, when the fruitful lands of the conquered Aztecs were parceled out among the hungry Spanish _compañeros_ of the Conqueror. Some of these farms or _haciendas_, as they are called, contain as many as a million acres.
Mexico is to all intents and purposes a free trade country, and the fabrics and goods of Europe mostly supply the needs and fancies of the Mexicans. The dry goods stores are in the hands of the French, with here and there a Spaniard from old Spain; the drug stores are kept by Germans, who all speak fluent Spanish, and the cheap cutlery and hardware are generally of German make. The wholesale and retail grocers have been Spaniards, but this trade is now drifting to the Americans. There are some fine jewelry stores, and gems and gold work are displayed in their windows calculated to dazzle even an American. The Mexican delights in jewels, and men and women love to have their fingers ablaze with sparkling diamonds, and their fronts behung with many chains of gold. And opals! Everyone will sell you opals!
In leather work, the Mexican is a master artist. He has inherited the art from the clever artificers among the ancient Moors. Coats and pantaloons (I use purposely the word _pantaloons_) and hats are made of leather, soft, light and elastic as woven fibre. And as for saddles and bridles, all the accoutrements of the _caballero_ are here made more sumptuously than anywhere in all the world.
The shops are opened early in the morning and remain open until noon, when most of them are closed until three o’clock, while the clerks are allowed to take their _siesta_, the midday rest. Then in the cool hours of the evening they stay open until late.
Over on one side of a small park, under the projecting loggia of a long, low building, I noticed, to-day, a dozen or more little tables, by each of which sat a dignified, solemn-looking man. Some were waiting for customers, others were writing at the dictation of their clients; several were evidently composing love letters for the shy, brown _muchachas_ who whispered to them. Of the thirteen millions constituting the population of the Mexican Republic, less than two millions can read and write. Hence it is, that this profession of scribe is one of influence and profit.