84 MEXICO. 
Until recently, there were in the city of Puebla two sisters, remarkable 
for the manufacture o^ figures from rags. These ladies were of respect- 
able birth, and always commanded a ready sale for their works, which 
were sought for even in Europe. They moulded the figures of lumps 
of beeswax, covered the different parts of the body with cotton cloth of 
colors suited to the complexion, and, while the wax was yet soft, moulded 
the features into the required expression, completing the representation 
with appropriate dresses. I have two of these in my possession, which, 
in point of character, are worthy of the pencil of Teniers. They repre- 
sent an old Indian woman, scolding and weeping over her drunken son. 
The grief and age of the one, and the tipsy leer, roll of the head, and 
want of command over the limbs of the other, are rendered with indes- 
cribable faithfulness. One of these remarkable artists died while I was 
in Mexico, and the other is extremely old and feeble, so that it has now 
become a matter of great difficulty to obtain a specimen of her works ; 
nor can they hereafter be as perfect as formerly, as the sister who died 
was remarkable for her perfection in forming the figures, while the 
greater talent of finishing and giving expression, was the task of the sur- 
vivor. Both duties now devolve on her, and what with age and the loss 
of her companion, her hand seems to have lost much of its cunning. 
But let us retrace our way to the Museum. 
Turning from the statue of Charles IV. in the centre of the court-yard, 
to the left-hand side of the quadrangle, you observe the arcades at that 
end covered with panels of wood, ten or fifteen feet high, and apparently 
filled with boxes, old bookcases, old stones, and a quantity of lumber. A 
real to the porter will, however, admit you to the inclosure, and you will 
be surprised to find amid that mass of filth, dirt, and refuse furniture, 
relics of antiquity for which thousands would be gladly paid by the Brit- 
ish Museum, the Louvre, the Glyptotheca of Munich, or, indeed, by any 
enlightened Sovereign, who possessed the taste to acquire and the money 
to purchase. 
You see a mimic tree, with a stuffed bear climbing up it; a bleached 
and hairless tiger-skin dangling from the ceiling ; half-a-dozen Indian 
dresses made of snake-skins, fluttering on the wall ; and, amid all this 
confusion, towers aloft the grand and hideous Indian idol of Teoyaomi- 
Qui; the great Stone of Sacrifice, (with a stone cross now erected in the 
middle to sanctify it;) the celebrated statue of the Indio Teiste, not long 
since disinterred ; a colossal head of serpentine, in the Egyptian style of 
sculpture ; the two carvings of the Feathered Serpents, already described 
in my letter on Cholula ; while, on the benches around the walls, and scat- 
tered over the floor, are numberless figures of dogs, monkeys, lizards, 
