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The Grand Hotel at Mérida is the customary stopping-place for all foreigners and is a very good and well-operated institution. It faces the beautiful tree-lined Plaza Hidalgo, but is, unfortunately, located close to a number of churches and a cathedral whose cracked bells are rung mightily at various hours and particularly when one wishes to sleep. As a result, persons not yet hardened to this venerable Spanish-American custom are likely to have a broken night’s slumber.

Mérida is a city of 63,000 people and is modern in many respects. It is hot there in the sun but cool in the shade, for there is always a breeze from the perpetually blowing trade-wind. The city is healthful, well paved, electrically lighted, and excellently served with street cars, and it has many handsome buildings and residences. Its population varies all the way from the pure Castilian, through the Mestizos, to the Mayas or full-blooded Indians. Almost every night a band plays in one of the several plazas or parks. North-American airs are favored and I have heard them much more badly played by musicians in our own land than here under the tropical moonlight, in a setting of rarely beautiful and fragrant flowers. During the band concert daintily clean Indian girls, in their voluminous embroidered dresses or huipiles and embroidered sandals, circle about. In another circle stroll their Indian beaux in high-heeled sandals and starched white cotton suits. The ladies of the upper class, dressed in the Spanish or European manner, are driven slowly about the plaza in their automobiles. Formerly carriages—the sort we call, or did call, landaus—were used, but the automobile has displaced these and in so doing has destroyed half the charm of the scene. Nevertheless it is still charming. The romance of it may be guaranteed to put a thrill into the cold heart of the loan shark from Chicago. It alone is worth the trip to Yucatan and it cannot be described; it has to be experienced at first hand.