At night he rolls himself up in it, and sleeps on a mat or a board, or on the stones in the open air.
Convenient as it is, the serape is as much tabooed among the "respectable" classes in the cities as the rest of the national costume.

I recollect going one evening after dark to the house of our friends in the Calle Seminario with my serape on, and nearly having to fight it out with the great dog Nelson, who was taking charge of his master's room.

Nelson knew me perfectly well, and had sat that very morning at the hotel-gate for half an hour, holding my horse, while a crowd of leperos stood round, admiring his size and the gravity of his demeanour as he sat on the pavement, with the bridle in his mouth.

But that a man in a serape should come into his master's room at dusk was a thing he could not tolerate, till the master himself came in, and satisfied his mind on the subject.
As I said, the equipment of ourselves and our three horses took us into a variety of strange places, for we bought the things we wanted piece by piece, when we saw anything that suited us.

Among other places we went to the Baratillo, which is the Rag-Fair and Petticoat Lane of Mexico, and moreover the emporium for whips, bridles, bits, old spurs, old iron, and odds and ends generally.