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Meanwhile, David Cairns watched the tall, young cook, lean, tanned, and with an ugly triangle of fresh sunburn under his left shoulder-blade, where his shirt had been torn with a thorn that day. He loosed the aparejos and mantas, containing the kitchen-kit; almost magically a fire was started.
Famous, too, are the mantas, or women's dresses, of black wool, made in long rectangular pieces. The common grade sells for $6.00, and in using it, it is, like indian dresses generally, simply wrapped about the figure and held in place by a sash or belt.
I was falling in love with her, but I was married." Alison sighed. "Lovena was great, very shy and quiet, hard working. Sometimes she talked to me when the orders were packed and shipped. She talked about horses and barracuda and manta rays. I guess there's one time of year when mantas come into shallow water to mate or lay eggs or something. People can step on them by accident and get hurt."
Do look at this creature, I said to the Master, he seems to be very hard at work at his devotions. Mantas religiosa, said the Master, I know the praying rogue. Mighty devout and mighty cruel; crushes everything he can master, or impales it on his spiny shanks and feeds upon it, like a gluttonous wretch as he is. I have seen the Mantis religiosa on a larger scale than this, now and then.
At last I bethought myself of retiring to rest; before departing, however, I took out and affixed to the porch of the church an advertisement to the effect that the New Testament was to be purchased at Salamanca. On returning to the house, I found the two travelling merchants enjoying profound slumber on various mantas or mule-cloths stretched on the floor.
And the leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirty white mantas, yelled their approbation. General Montero, Gamacho howled with conviction, was the only man equal to the patriotic task. They assented to that, too. The morning was wearing on; there were already signs of disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some were seeking the shade of the walls and under the trees of the Alameda.
These mantas serve many purposes; they are made of two breadths of brightly striped and ornamented material of wool and silk, sewn up at one end, or sometimes for some distance at each end, like a purse; sometimes they are thrown across the mule to serve as saddle-bags, sometimes one end is used as a hood and is drawn over the master's head, while the remainder is thrown across his chest and mouth and over the left shoulder.
"O, good Shebotha!" cries the young girl, in passionate tone, her heart heaving with rekindled hope, "can you assure me of that? If so, you shall have all I can give you; my armlets, neck ornaments, mantas, hamacas, everything. Fear not my rewarding you well!" "Nacena is generous," rejoins the sorceress, her eyes sparkling with pleasure at such a wholesale proffer of chattels.
Mitla is famous for its weaving; fine mantas of wool are made there in two chief styles one a long strip of black or blue-black cloth, the other a rich red, sometimes banded or striped with black. These Mitla mantas are widely sold to Zapotecs, in all the district around, and form the characteristic women's dress.
The silk petticoats of the women, the velvet jackets and trunk hose of the men, the beautiful silk and woollen mantas, with their deep fringes of silken or woollen balls; the madroños, or silk tufts and balls, used as decorations for the Andalusian or the gypsy hats, not to mention the beautifully soft and pure silks of Barcelona, or the silk laces made in such perfection in many parts of the country, all these are objects of merchandise only needing to be known, to occasion a large demand, especially in these days when the French invention of weighted dyes floods the English market with something that has the outward appearance of silk, but which does not even wait for wear to disclose its real nature, but rots into holes on the drapers' shelves, and would-be smart young women of slender purses walk about in what has been well called "tin attire," in the manufacture of which the silk-worm has had only the slenderest interest.
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