lque, or hearse, another being reserved for the
pall-bearers and mourners. Sometimes one sees a long string of these
cars occupied for this purpose gliding into the suburbs where the
grave-yards are located. The use of cow-horns by the driver to warn the
people who obstruct the way appeared to be a little primitive, to say
the least of it, in a city so large as this capital. It seems very
effective, however. The fact that all of the tramway cars start from and
return to the Plaza Mayor in front of the cathedral makes it easy for a
stranger to find his way to any desired point of the city or its
environs, and safely to return to the starting point when he desires to
do so. The Plaza Mayor in every Mexican city is not only the central
park, but also the central idea. There could no more be a full-fledged
Spanish city without a plaza than a cathedral without a bishop.

Statistics show that there are nearly, or quite, five hundred miles of
streets in the Mexican capital. These, intersecting each other at right
angles, are so strangely alike as to be not a little puzzling to the
uninitiated. It is also somewhat awkward at first to find one continuous
avenue bearing many names, each block being individualized by a fresh
appellation. This subdivision of the large avenues, we were told, is
gradually to be discarded. The admirable boulevard called the Paseo de
la Reforma, leads out of the city to the castle of Chapultepec, and is
over two miles in length, with a uniform width of two hundred feet,
forming the fashionable afternoon drive and promenade of the town. It
has double avenues of shade trees to the right and left, with stone
sidewalks and convenient seats for those who desire them. On either side
of this grand boulevard are seen an occasional chateau with handsome
gardens. At certain intervals the avenue widens into a _glorieta_, or
circle, four hundred feet in diameter. The first of these contains
Cordier's Columbus, one of the most admirable and artistic modern
statues which we remember to have seen, though there appeared to be some
confusion in the extraordinary amount of detail which is crowded upon
the base. Other appropriate monuments ornament the several circles,
including an equestrian statue of Charles IV. of colossal size; thirty
tons of metal was used in the casting, and, if not the largest, it is
the second largest that has ever been cast. Still another represents
Guatemozin, the last of the Indian emperors. It