1892 
Spanish, It is a common thing to find Indians living about the valley 
(Jfaa?©o) &nd iU neishborhood who do noij talk Spanish, and their o?m tongues are 
used habitually among themselves, There are various tribes about here,- 
the Aztecs, Obomies, etc,, etc. At the market of San Juan de Dios a 
number of women of the "Obomi 1 ' (?) tribe in their peculiar costume of 
hand-woven clothes may be seen selling tortillas or other 31.0a 11 
articles. 
At the market of the Mercedes (?), SE of the main plaza by the 
border of the canal and in the midst of the poorer quarter of the 
town, surrounded by hundreds of pulque shops with gaudily ornamented 
irants and interiors, there is a great gathering place of Indians of 
Azcec descent from the valley who bring in here wild ducks by the 
/ 
thousand from the marshy lakes of the valley where they are snared and 
killed by the ancient methods practiced before the conquest. Fruits 
ana vegetables rrom the cool tablelands and down the slopes to the 
tropics are also sold here on mats spread under the shade of other 
mats spread on umbrella-like wooden frames. At the same time, the 
venders of all manner of cooked food do a thriving trade. Tortillas 
fried in oil, chile sauce, or rolled and filled with a chile salad,- 
meats of various kinds, Shoep and goat heads boiled or roasted with 
» 
the hair still on and Just as they were out from the carcass are a 
xavorite morsel, Dong rows of women are busy on the pavement picking 
ducks or chaffering over the sale of their wares. Here the squalor 
of both buyers and sellers is often revolting at the same time that it 
has a fascinating picturesqueness. Brown, naked infants sprawl about 
ox inking in the sun or tugging at the freely exposed maternal founts. 
Currish dogs prowl cringingly about to snap up stray morsels, and at 
slack moments the women squatted by their wares gossip with one another 
or search for vermin in the heads of their offspring. Amid the bustle 
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