344 



The National Geographic Magazine 



count in ' 'A White Umbrella in Mexico ' ' 

 of a visit to this picture, one feels quite 

 defrauded of his just dues of adventure 

 in making a prosaic trip there on a raw- 

 boned pony over a few miles of trail. 



The eastern end of Lake Chapala, in 

 Jalisco, was the starting point of the 

 real work of our expedition. This is 

 the largest fresh- water lake in Mexico, 

 being about seventy miles 

 long and fifteen miles wide. 

 One of its peculiarities is 

 that the inlet and outlet of 

 the lake are both at the east- 

 ern end, and only a few miles 

 apart. The Spaniards had 

 the custom of naming both 

 their streets and rivers in sec- 

 tions, and this accounts for 

 the river flowing into Lake 

 Chapala being called the Ler- 

 ma, while the continuation 

 of this stream, forming the 

 outlet, is named the San- 

 tiago. Man}' small towns 

 and villages are found around 

 the shores of the lake, and 

 considerable local trade is 

 carried on in large, flat-bot- 

 tomed boats, with square 

 sails, and thatched roofs in 

 place of decks. 



Traffic among the people of 

 this region is commonly on a 

 small scale, and both men and 

 women sell their wares, often 

 the product of their own 

 labor, in the market places. 

 There is also a class of itin- 

 erant traders, who go from 

 town to town, as markets are 

 held on different days, carry- 

 ing their wares upon their 

 These peddlers add greatly 



metal from old coins to wicked-looking 

 daggers and agricultural implements. 

 In one such collection in an Indian 

 town I found an old dueling pistol of 

 excellent workmanship, bearing the 

 name of a London maker. 



There is a curious blending of the 

 archaic and modern among the lower 

 classes of Mexico. They patronize the 



Photo by Nelson 



Boat on Lake Chapala, with a Square Sail and 



Thatched Roof Over Stern. This is the 



Largest Freshwater Lake in Mexico 



backs, 

 to the 

 local color of the market places. The 

 junk sellers, in particular, always ex- 

 cite interest from the strange collec- 

 tion of odds and ends they spread 

 upon the pavement. Their wares in- 

 clude almost every imaginable object of 



railroads and buy many modern prod- 

 ucts, yet among them are found the 

 survivals of various primitive industries. 

 Many of them in the region about Lake 

 Chapala still spin cotton by means of 

 a slender spindle, with a clay whorl like 

 those found everywhere in prehistoric- 

 village sites. The spindle is twirled 



