Identifier: triptomexicobein00bech (find matches)
Title: A trip to Mexico, being notes of a journey from Lake Erie to Lake Tezcuco and back, with an appendix, containing and being a paper about the ancient nations and races who inhabited Mexico before and at the time of the Spanish conquest, and the ancient stone and other structures and ruins of ancient cities found there
Year: 1880 (1880s)
Authors: Becher, Henry C. R
Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel Mexico -- Antiquities
Publisher: Toronto : Willing and Williamson
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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be seen. Mr. C , a talented member of the New York Press, is withthe Consulate party, and he interprets. The hall of the ambassadors is the chief, and amagnificent room. Its length is about a hundredand eighty feet, its width hardly sufficient for itslength. Portraits of the leading Generals andPresidents hang on its walls, with some other paintings, among them one of the noclie triste, depictingthe terrible attack upon Cortes and his band on thecauseways during the night of their retreat. The picture is by a native artist, is large and veryelaborate, requiring much time to master its details ;but it seemed to me to want light, without whichno picture, especially those containing many figures,can be a success : you looked through an atmos-phere of darkness at large masses of figures fight-ing, struggling, and upon no figure or group was theflame of torch or other light brought to bear by theartist as it seemed to me it should have been. Asked if we should like to see the President, we
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To face page 79. GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ, President of the Re^mblic of Mexico. PRESIDENT DIAZ. 79 said, certainly we should, but we could not think ofintruding upon his time. We were told however, that the President wouldsee us, and we were taken from the hall of Ambas-sadors to a smaller room and seated. Soon an aid-de-camp passes us with a paper, as if on business, butevidently to see what manner of people we were. ThePresident^ shortly enters—he is of middle height,slight rather than stout, graceful, genial in manner,a pure Indian, and is dressed in ordinary morning costume ; we rise and are presented by Mr. C , who tells the President in Spanish shortly, who eachof us is ; we are all made to sit again, and the Pre-sident has some words of conversation for us all, theright word always in the right place; there wasthat well-bred ease and repose about his mannerwhich is so rarely met with—how did he acquire itor is it simply Aztec high breeding \ The son of an * Prince Salm-Salm in

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