PROGRESO. 1 



squares in the sides, where shells are carefully set in vari- 

 ous shapes in the mortar, and which make a pleasing 

 effect, the diamonds and other shapes giving the walls a 

 variety that is really artistic. Here I first tasted the sort 

 of chocolate of which Montezuma was so fond. A brown, 

 brawny Indian made us a cup of the same in a corner caf^. 

 It is prepared in milk, and is a thick, soft liquid that melts 

 on your tongue. One must come to Mexico to know how 

 *'chocolatte" can taste. 



The fields about Progreso have chiefly shrubs and 

 cacti. Beautiful flowers of purple, yellow, and crimson 

 abound. Here the heliotrope grows wild, the fragrant 

 purple flower that is scattered so generally at funerals. 

 The sweet-pea and other cultivated delights of the northern 

 hot-house and garden, are blooming abundantly. 



The cocoa-palm throws out its long spines, deep 

 green, thrust straight out from a gray trunk, that looks as 

 if wrapped in old clothes against the cold. This gray bark 

 is a striking offset to the dark, rich leaves, which are the 

 branches themselves. Where these leaves push forth from 

 the trunk, from ten to fifty feet from the ground, a cluster 

 of green balls, of various sizes and ages, is hanging. Then 

 the black shell known to us is reached, and inside of that, 

 not the thick, white substance we find on opening it, but a 

 thin, soft layer, or third rind, the most of the hollow being 

 filled with milk. Later in the season the milk coagulates 

 to meat, and the cocoanut of commerce is completed. 



The people are chiefly natives; not of the Aztec, but 

 Toltec variety. This is a .nation hundreds of years older 

 than the Aztecs, and who are supposed to be the builders 

 of the famous monuments of Central America, and to have 

 been driven from Mexico southward about a thousand 

 years ago. Both sexes wear white, the men and boys hav- 

 ing often one leg of their trousers rolled up, for what pur- 



