/J 
 
 A MEX ICAN JO URNEY 
 
 E. H. BUCHFELDT 
 
 CHAUTAUQUA 
 HOME READING SERIES \ 
 
 ftfi»^«i&A*<«bc, 
 
 ^ 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 F 1215.B641919 
 
 A Mexican ourney / 
 
 3 1924 020 397 083 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020397083 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 BY 
 
 E. H. gLICHFELDT 
 
 ILLUSTRATE'D 
 
 Qlt}? (Slfantauqittt Pr^B 
 
 CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK 
 MCMXIX 
 
The Chatuiauqua Literary 
 and Scientific Circle 
 
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 Founded in 1878 
 
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 CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION 
 PHAUTAUQUA. N, Y, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 MOST of what appears in the following 
 pages was first written for the Chau- 
 tauquan magazine, though all has 
 been carefully revised for its present use. If 
 the fruits of laborious original research ap- 
 pear anywhere, it is the research of some one 
 besides the author. His debt in this way is 
 informally suggested by the text, except when 
 it relates to things now become common prop- 
 erty, and calling for no special acknowledg- 
 ment. The opinions and sentiments expressed 
 regarding our Mexican neighbors, on the con- 
 trary, may be taken as at first hand. Here 
 also the writer would be presumptuous to set 
 up any claims as a discoverer or to deny that 
 he owes much to teachers and prompters. 
 These opinions and sentiments, however, are 
 such as without falsity he may call his own, 
 and grow out of alert, sympathetic contact 
 and correspondence with Mexicans for several 
 years. If the reader can be made to adopt 
 
 iii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 them by the somewhat impressionistic account 
 here given, the only deliberate purpose of the 
 book will have been served. For the most 
 part even this has been quite subordinate to 
 the impulse that Henry Ward Beecher de- 
 clared when he said, "There are some things 
 that cannot be seen satisfactorily with, less 
 than four eyes." The delights of travel in 
 Mexico are such as one would like to share., 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE TO 1919 EDITION:— So far as this book 
 is a record of easy, somewhat irresponsible travels, it is unchanged 
 since the first edition. The last tour described was made in 1911, 
 just when the Madero revolution had got well under way. Since 
 then, adventurous students, with quite special credentials, have 
 made their way to capital and rebel camp ahke, and representatives 
 of important foreign interests have held on here and there; but to 
 the casual visitor, Mexico has been closed. 
 
 It matters little, for the aspects of the country dwelt upon are 
 either unaltered or altered iH ways not yet confirmed. That the 
 sailing route of the Ward Line steamers in 1919 differs from that of 
 1911, for example, is unimportant for the purpose in mind. 
 
 The historical narrative, on the other hand, has been supple- 
 mented; and political comment has been adapted to new facts. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 <:haptes fagb 
 
 I. Mexico 1 
 
 II. The Mexicans 10 
 
 ril. Going 23 
 
 IV. Henequin 41 
 
 V. Vera Cbuz 57 
 
 VI. Tehuantepec and the Jungle ... 67 
 
 VII. Oaxaca 92 
 
 VIII. To MiTLA AND Back 100 
 
 IX. Mexico City ... .... 109 
 
 X. Sight-seeing at the Capital . . . .119 
 
 XI. The Government 145 
 
 XII. XOCHIMILCO 164 
 
 XIII. Cuernavaca, Cuaittla, Puebla . . . 173 
 
 XIV. A Toltec Pyramid 182 
 
 XV. Higher than the Alps 190 
 
 XVI. Towns and More Towns 202 
 
 V 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CRAFTEin PASa 
 
 XVII. A Ride to Regla 210 
 
 XVIII. The West and North 220 
 
 XIX. Tides that Meet 235 
 
 XX. Customs and Compabisons 248 
 
 XXI. Last Words 257 
 
 Bibliography 271 
 
 Index 273 
 
 VJ 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
~ COPYKIGHT, 1912, 
 
 By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY. 
 
 Puhliahed September, 191^. 
 
A MeaAcan Journey 
 
 MEXICO 
 
 k- 
 
 IF you will join our company going to, 
 Mexico, I pronlise to show you things en- 
 joyable to see — things that have been a 
 source of unfailing pleasure to me myself. 
 You will see them as I did on a visit a few 
 months ago.* Along the way I shall not 
 wholly refrain from telling you of earlier hap- 
 pienings and experiences that come back to 
 one on familiar ground after an absence; it 
 would be hard to exclude these, and I feel 
 sure of your good-humored consent. Do not 
 expect learned instruction on any scholarly 
 subject, though if that is what you want per- 
 haps I can tell you where to find it. For the 
 most part I know it will not be desired. Here 
 and there an intelligent visitor is likely to ask 
 questions; and at such points, without going 
 to excess, I will tell you a little of what I 
 
 •1911 1 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 understand the scholars and thinkers have con- 
 cluded. It is not an analysis but a survey 
 that we shall try to make, however, — not an 
 investigation but a pleasant, wide-awake jour- 
 ney together. If in its progress you grow 
 as fond of Mexico and the Mexicans as I have 
 long been, you will feel that acquaintance 
 with them is abundantly worth whatever time 
 and effort it may have cost. 
 
 On any but the idlest excursion every one 
 is fore-minded to a degree. Let us not ac- 
 tually set out, therefore, till we have inquired 
 briefly who the Mexicans are, what their an- 
 tecedents, environment, and condition, and 
 what prejudices and ideals we may look for 
 among them. 
 
 Mexico is not so large by half as it was 
 before the war with the United States, known 
 in American history as the Mexican War. To 
 be more exact, we should say before the Texan 
 War for Independence; but Mexicans think 
 of Texas as having been forested from them 
 by the same,^ategy which ended in their loss 
 of that greater neigliboring area since carved 
 up, roughly speaking, into a half-dozen other 
 states and territories of the American Union. 
 Till 1835 their domain was nearly equal to 
 
MEXICO 
 
 that of the Unit^^^tates, or to the whole 
 of Europe leaving out Russia and Turkey. 
 Even now, what remains to them would be 
 enough to encompass Great Britain, Ireland, 
 France, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian 
 Empire. That its natural resources will sus- 
 tain such a comparison can here be neither 
 asserted nor denied, but the scientist and the 
 explorer go far beyond the mere tourist in 
 appreciation of its riches. Where the tourist 
 sees only desert, they see the waving green 
 and yellow of potential harvests. If they dis- 
 count at all the reckless enthusiasm of pro- 
 moters beguiling the American investor, it is 
 not regarding the latent wealth of the country, 
 but regarding the ease with which settlers 
 totally lacking in experience may grow rub- 
 ber' on impossible land bought at random, or 
 market pineapples irrespective of means for 
 transportation. There is no doubt that the 
 country will feed and clothe some added mil- 
 lions of people, and that it hides mineral 
 , wealth either to supplyjje necessaries of 
 still ather^^fflillions, or to barter for what- 
 ever ma y bg lacking. Suffice it to say that 
 in its undejseloped resources we are consider- 
 ing no insignificant country. Then let us 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 pass from things that might or that doubtless 
 may be to things that have been and are. 
 
 The mantle of natural verdure and primi- 
 tive human graces, of medieval romance sur- 
 viving in a practical age, of hospitality, of 
 leisure, and of pride which have been painted 
 for us by the hands of such writers as Mr, 
 F. Hopkinson Smith — ^this mantle is spread 
 over a rugged and highly substantial frame- 
 work, concerning which one refers, with an 
 appropriate feeling of solidity, to Alexander 
 von Humboldt. The geologic framework will 
 be suggested to travelers in the United States 
 by saying that it exhibits yet more strongly 
 the qualities, as plainly it continues the sys- 
 tem, not of the Appalachian, but of the west- 
 ern highlands of the United States. It is 
 rugged. Titanic, challenging, not rounded and 
 softened as though it grew ready ages ago to 
 invite the coming of civilized man. The stu- 
 dious reader may consult Humboldt and later 
 supplemental investigations, while others con- 
 tent themselves for the moment with this 
 general hint. Not gentle little hills like sheep 
 in a meadow, but towering and bristling 
 giants amid shatterings of a world stand in 
 Mexico for mountain scenery. 
 
 4 
 
MEXICO 
 
 Even while giving this description I recall 
 a very different one which may well be quoted 
 here. Charles Macomb Flandrau, in his highly 
 suggestive and entertaining, though often 
 cynical and at times flippantly careless "Viva 
 Mexico," says: 
 
 "The view from the piazza was characteristic of 
 the inountainous, tropical parts of Mexico, and, like 
 most of the views there, combined both the grandeur, 
 the awfulness of space and height — of eternal, un- 
 trodden snows piercing the thin blue — with the soft 
 velvet beauty of tropical verdure, the unimaginable 
 delicacy and variety of color that glows and palpi- 
 tates in vast areas of tropical foliage seen at different 
 distances through haze and sunlight. Mountains 
 usually have an elemental, geologic sex of some sort, 
 and the sex of slumbering, jungle-covered, tropical 
 mountains is female. There is a symmetry, a chaste 
 volcanic elegance about them that renders them the 
 consorts and daughters of man-mountains like, say, 
 the Alps, the Rockies, or the mountains of the Cau- 
 casus." 
 
 The description just quoted, however, is 
 true only of what it represents, and it repre- 
 sents the mountains with which, doubtless, the 
 author is most intimately acquainted. The 
 mountains with which I lived from day to 
 day in Mexico for three years rise from plains 
 Already too high for tropical or even semi- 
 
 5 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 tropical conditions, and hold their peaks from 
 two to three and one-half miles perpendicu- 
 larly above sea-level. They are, I believe, of 
 the sort that one usually means in speaking 
 of mountainous Mexico. The other picture, 
 however, will have value to us, not only for 
 intrinsic beauty, but also as showing how 
 almost everything Mexican defies simple and 
 summary treatment. The country is one of 
 well-nigh uijlimited variety, of sharp con- 
 trasts, and of apparentjipntradictions. Snojv 
 and burning desert, oak and palm and steam- 
 ing jungle growth, are all to be found in the 
 1500 miles between Sonora and Yucatan. 
 More impressively, indeed, they will all ap- 
 pear in a cross-section, to be accomplished by 
 one day's travel. One may drink chocolate 
 and cinnamon on the warm Gulf shore in the 
 morning, pass upward through the altitudes 
 of cocoanut, orange, coffee and banana, sugar 
 and cotton, during the next two or three 
 hours, and by eleven o'clock, if a "norther" 
 happens to be blowing, draw on a heavy coat 
 for warmth, while looking upward across the 
 dry table-land to slumbering volcanoes capped 
 with snows that never melt. Mexico is a land 
 pf contrasts. 
 
 6 
 
MEXICO 
 
 A notion that the tarry-at-home traveler 
 must dismiss before he can rightly conceive 
 of Mexico, is that latitude determines temper- 
 ature. Latitude is one of a number of con- 
 ditions that have their influence on climate, 
 but no one of them can ever be assumed to 
 determine temperature until the others have 
 been taken into account. The northern fringe 
 of New York State along Lake Erie, which 
 has become famous as a "grape belt," has as 
 mild,a climate as parts of eastern Kentucky, 
 and there are* points on the coast of Alaska 
 where the winter is less severe than in either 
 of the localities just compared. Of all the 
 conditions that go to determine climate, alti- 
 tude is the one that figures most surprisingly 
 to the New Englander when Mexico is being 
 studied. At least one JNIexican guide-book 
 has, and all such guide-books ought to have, 
 tables of elevation for the important places on 
 the map. All other elements being normal, 
 an altitude of less than 3000 feet will give a 
 hot climate in any part of the republic. An 
 altitude between 3000 and 7000 feet will give 
 a temperate climate, and an altitude from 
 7000 up to 14,000 feet will give a cold climate. 
 One does not speak at all gf gijmate in the 
 
 7 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 snow belt of Mexico, because snow and vegeta- 
 tion do not alternate there, and life cannot in 
 any natural way be supported. The snow line 
 is about 14,000 feet above sea-level. The gen- 
 el-al level in that vast part of Mexico known 
 as the Plateau has an elevation of 6000 to 
 8000 feet. Suppose, however, that we mean 
 by a hot climate an average temperature 
 throughout the year of about 85 degrees, still 
 it is true that the greatest extreme of heat 
 will not exceed that in New York, and the 
 discomfort caused by it will be less than in 
 New York. Similarly, if by a cold climate 
 we mean a yearly average temperature of 60 
 degrees, it will be found that the thermometer 
 rarely goes so low as freezing, even in winter. 
 A moment's reflection will now make it clear 
 that variations up or dowjj in a given locality 
 are much less than they are farther north. 
 This would be inferred from the latitude, as 
 seasonal changes are generally less marked 
 nearer the equator. 
 
 If the differences between winter and sum- 
 mer are less, the differences between night and 
 day are more, and those between shady and 
 sunny sides of a street far more, than in New 
 York or Chicago. Even above 8000 feet the 
 
 8 
 
MEXICO 
 
 noonday sun is fierce, yet in the shade there 
 is never a day above that altitude when the 
 "shirt-waist man" from New York would sit 
 long without his coat. At a given tempera- 
 ture he v/ould feel much colder than at home, 
 probably because evaporation from the skin 
 is more rapid, as well as because of the rarer 
 atmosphere and consequent smaller intake of 
 oxygen. If ordinarily blessed with good cir- 
 culation, the northerner will be surprised that, 
 even when the thermometer registers several 
 degrees above freezing, he needs winter under- 
 wear and a heavy overcoat. A phenomenon 
 well known to mountain climbers and physi- 
 cists, but new to many visitors, is that the de- 
 creased air pressure allows water to boil at 
 lower temperature, and an egg or any vege- 
 table cooked in it must be kept longer over 
 the fire. The atmospheric pressure at Mexico 
 City, for example, is fourteen pounds to the 
 square inch. This is a mere detail ; but it i-ep- 
 resents a whole set of conditions for which the 
 visiting lowlander is never quite prepared, 
 however much he may have heard and read 
 about them. 
 
II 
 
 THE MEXICANS 
 
 SOMEWHAT like the diversity of the 
 land is the diversity of its people. 
 Among them are about six millions be- 
 longing to the native races, over six millions 
 of mixed blood, and three million whites. If 
 we could assign to each of these three classes 
 its relative place in the social and economic 
 scale, you would no doubt welcome the con- 
 venience. This is impossible. There is a so- 
 cial and economic scale with well-marked 
 gradations, but in applying its test, race can 
 hardly be said to figure. It is true that arriong 
 those occupying the highest jtation, pure In- 
 dians are rare, and that among those occupy- 
 ing the lowest station, the pux.ejw.hite does not 
 £sist, the occasional American tramp being 
 outside oiir„jiiscussion. The fact remains, 
 however, that there is no relation in industry, 
 profession, business, politics, or formal so- 
 ciety from which the pure Indian would be 
 
 10 
 
THE MEXICAN^ 
 
 debarred, or for aspiring to which he would 
 not have ample warrant in law, sentiment, and 
 historic example. Benito Juarez, the greatest 
 Mexican who has ever lived and the greatest 
 object of national veneration to-day, was a 
 £iill.-blooded Indian. Porfirio Diaz was one- 
 fourth Indian according to his approved biog- 
 raphers, but intelligent Mexicans generally 
 believe him to have been three-fourths,' and 
 they do not say this to disparage him. For a 
 Mexican of European ancestry to disdain a 
 Mexican of somewhat mixed blood, or for one 
 of mixed blood to treat a cultured Indian as 
 inferior, because in him the native blood per- 
 haps of princes has never been mingled for 
 better or worse with a foreign strain — either 
 of these demonstrations of arrogance would, I 
 suppose, be unique in recent times. There are 
 families who take a harmless pride in declar- 
 ing themselves Creoles of pure Spanish ex- 
 traction. A writer already mentioned, how- 
 ever, says that most unadulterated Spaniards 
 in the republic are "either priests or grocers." 
 Bull-fighters are another contingent. A gov- 
 ernor of one of the Mexican states once said 
 to me after speaking of his own lineage: 
 "Very few of us here, if we are Mexicans of 
 
 11 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 more than two or three generations, can tell 
 what proportion of native Indian blood we 
 may have." It might have been replied that, 
 even so, they are not much farther from a 
 complete racial analysis of themselves than 
 some of the rest of mankind. 
 
 It very soon ceases to be a surprise, then, 
 to find in the learned professions and in im- 
 portant positions of various kinds, people of 
 the original Mexican stock. Perhaps the fact 
 that all of these are not equally dark, that 
 some Spaniards are far from light, and that 
 the natives often have splendid hea,ds and 
 finely chiseled features has as much to do with 
 the state of affairs as the undoubted capacity 
 of many of the Indians. 
 
 In the entire absence of a race problem, for 
 which JMexicans ought to be grateful, eco- 
 nomic differences are- as sharp and distinctions 
 are as clearly drawn as elsewhere. There is 
 j}er}\a r<K no country equally civilized where the 
 educational, political, and material welfare of 
 the laboring people has advanced less and 
 where their condition presents more cruel, and 
 at the same time more immemorially pictur- 
 esque phases than in Mexico. The problem of 
 lifting them to a distinctly higher plane of 
 
 12 
 
THE MEXICANS 
 
 life is the immediate and urgent problem of 
 the nation. It was the justification for the 
 Madero revolubion, v/hatever may have been 
 the alleged grievances of other classes. It is 
 the matter concerning which the Diaz regime 
 must give its most important final account, 
 however great the progress made in material 
 development. We may assume that Presi- 
 dent Diaz and his friends recognized this; it 
 was one of their boasts, whether founded on 
 exact truth and complete knowledge or not, 
 that in Diaz's native state, Oaxaca, illiteracy 
 had been reduced from sixty per cent, to eight 
 per cent. Still, removing illiteracy in its tech- 
 nical iraplication by extending the mere ability 
 to read and write is not a complete cure. 
 President Madero at once declared his realiza- 
 tion that something larger and more funda- 
 mental is demanded and that the problem is 
 nation-wide. Henceforth, indeed, it cannot 
 be ignored. But when at length its solution 
 is reached, we feel that also one of the most 
 engaging, one of the most beautiful to the 
 imagination, of all the figures in the pageant 
 of human life will have passed forever. The 
 gentle, graceful, submissive, but well-nigh 
 unconquerable and v^holly inscrutable child 
 
 13 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of the ancient Aztecs, Chichimecs, and still 
 earlier Toltecs, whoever they may have been, 
 will have given place to some other, and 
 doubtless a newly composite type. 
 
 In writing the history of England, scholars 
 can give us little more than conjecture until 
 the advent of the Romans. Our British an- 
 cestors neglected to make for us any intelli- 
 gible record before that event. Similarly, 
 authentic knowledge of Mexico begins but 
 little previous ^o the arrival thither of the 
 gold-hunting, proselyting, and bloodthirsty 
 Spaniards, who were the first bringers of the 
 white man's civilization. Of the records that 
 existed, very many were ruthlessly destroyed, 
 and of the rest only a small part have been 
 deciphered. The advance toward civilization 
 on this continent, as in Europe, had had its 
 ebbs and flows, had been broken rather than 
 continuous. The Mexicans whom Cortez and 
 his valiant murderers overcame knew little 
 and said less of their remote predecessors. If 
 the Spaniards wondered at this they may also 
 have recalled similar lapses at home, seeing 
 that for generations the invading Moors, so 
 lately withdrawn from Spain, had been the 
 only preservers of classic Greek and Latin 
 
 14 
 
THE MEXICANS 
 
 learning. The Spaniards, as conquerors of 
 Mexico, were less kind to futurity; still cer- 
 tain outlines have been pieced together from 
 picture writings and from other evidence that 
 survives. 
 
 While there were tribes in various parts of 
 the land that maintained independence, the 
 greatness of Mexico as far back as history 
 can trace it centers in the valley of Mexico 
 round about the present capital, high on its 
 table-land, yet encircled by mountains of 
 much greater height. 
 
 When we say this, we are leaving aside, as 
 we must, the builders of noble and awe-inspir- 
 ing structures in Yucatan and elsewhere be- 
 cause they date back farther than any history. 
 These builders were great in their forgotten 
 day, but we do not know them and can give 
 them no place. They may have been contem- 
 poraries of Solomon or even of the Pharaoh 
 who oppressed the Israelites in Egypt, 
 'beginning, then, with what is fairly authen- 
 tic, the Toltecs had sway in Mexico from 
 about 650 A.D., four hundred years. They 
 were the greatest builders of historic or semi- 
 historic times. The Chichimecs, a ruder peo- 
 ple, succeeded the Toltecs, not by conquest 
 
 15 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 but because the Toltecs had died out. One 
 legend says that pulque^ the intoxicating 
 drink of the natives to this day, was the cause. 
 However that may be, the land of the Toltecs 
 was deserted until the .Qhichimecs spread over 
 it about 1175 a.d. The Agolhuas arrived a 
 few years later, and still a little later came the 
 Ag^s or Mexicans. No one can fix the exact 
 dates, but with a few years' interval the three 
 nations appear to have followed each other 
 in this order: Chichimecs, Acolhuas, Aztecs. 
 Although not wholly settled till later, all seem 
 to have appeared before the year 1200. 
 
 If the Chichimecs were less advanced in 
 arts than had been the Toltecs, this was not 
 equally true of the Acolhuas, who may have 
 been descended from some kindred of the 
 Toltecs, and with whom the Chichimecs min- 
 gled and intermarried. So progress was hin- 
 dered less than might have seemed likely. As 
 for the Aztecs (or Mexicans) , they were wan- 
 derers for a long time and held themselves 
 aloof. They are said to have come from 
 the Califojmas. On the way they built the 
 Qqsos Gr0ides, of which notable ruins re- 
 main. Then after further wandering they 
 reached the present site of Tula, fifty njiles 
 
 16 
 
THE MEXICANS 
 
 north of Mexico City, where more ruins can 
 easiljr be observed. The air is at once clear 
 and marvelously soft; and as I remember 
 there are two tireless buzzards wheeling far 
 above the sunlit crest of the hill. One fancies 
 that they must have done so always. The 
 Aztecs remained here nine years. Finally 
 they came to Chapultepec, "the hill of the 
 grasshopper," about 1250 a.d. They went 
 through one period of enslavement but were 
 set free, so the story goes, because their mas- 
 ters, a tribe called the Colhuas, were horrified 
 by their religious sacrifices of human beings 
 and the atrocious way in which they carried on 
 war, even when nominally under Colhuan 
 control. 
 
 The Aztecs had never been far distant from 
 Chapultepec since they first discovered it, and 
 near it on an island they now settled them- 
 selves. It was the j^ear 1325. The priests 
 who advised the tribe said that they saw 
 there an eagle sitting on a nopal or pricldj'^ 
 pear and strangling a serpent in its talons. 
 This they declared was a sign in agreement 
 with prophecy, and the place of their abiding 
 was so fixed. The Mexican coins of to-day, 
 as well as the national flag, bear as insignia 
 
 17 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 the eagle, the serpent, and the nopal cactus. 
 Classic stories of the founding of other towns 
 on sites oracularly pointed out may be inter- 
 esting — the story of Rome for example. The 
 Aztecs confirmed their tradition of religious 
 cruelty by a ceremonial baptism of the new 
 city in the blood of prisoners. Throughout 
 their future they continued such evil practices. 
 They showed, however, a genius for organiza- 
 tion, for coping with natural difficulties — as 
 in the construction of floating gardens before 
 they could possess themselves of enough nat- 
 ural land — and for diplomacy. By intermar- 
 riage of their princes with other royal families, 
 they at last made themselves masters of the 
 entire region round about. 
 ,j It was an Aztec dynasty, the dynasty of 
 (:' the Montezumas, that Cortez found in 1519, 
 or almost 200 years after the establishment 
 of their city. That horribly cruel religious 
 rites and inhuman conduct in war were fa- 
 miliar among them has been made clear; but 
 it is also certain that better instincts were 
 recognized among the people under their rule. 
 Otherwise, how would the legend have been 
 preserved that the independent existence of 
 the Mexican tribe came from a repugnance of 
 
 18 
 
THE MEXICANS 
 
 their masters to their cruelty in religion and 
 war? Quetzaleoatl, the gentle god of peace, 
 was the titular deity of many Aztecs who 
 were opposed to the sway of the more popular 
 god of war, Huitzilopochitli. Similarly, it is 
 clear that the government was aristocratic, but 
 familiarity with another ideal appears from 
 the account of hojv the nobles obtained their 
 power over the people. In 1425 the king and 
 his advisers wanted to make war upon some 
 neighbors, while the common people opposed 
 it, fearing that the enemy would be too strong. 
 The curious compact was made that war 
 should be entered upon with vigor, and that 
 if it failed the people might exact of the nobles 
 any forfeit, even their lives. If it succeeded, 
 contrary to the dismal prophecy of the people, 
 then they were to become slaves of the nobles. 
 The war succeeded and the people were held 
 to their unhappy promise. 
 
 The form of government among neighbor- 
 ing tribes varied. The Tlaxcalans, who aided 
 Cortez against the Mexicans because of an 
 old enmity, were democrats, their government 
 being a sort of republic. The interesting con- 
 sideration here is as to the state in which mat- 
 ters were found by the conquerors from over 
 
 19 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 the sea. Crueltj'' in practice by the rulers of 
 the principal nation, though mercy was recog- 
 nized as an ideal, and tyranny toward the 
 poor, though the democratic principle had 
 long been familiar, tell much of the condition. 
 The Europeans brought no improvement in 
 either of these two respects. Another element 
 worthy of mention was the strong religious 
 vein, availed of by the craft and power of the 
 priests, as unscrupulous as were the Roman 
 clergy a little later. In short, conditions were 
 present to make easy either the improvement 
 or the continued exploitation and degradation 
 of the people. 
 
 The Spaniards came. Few chapters in the 
 story of man surpass the record of daring, 
 energy, cruelty, greed, perfidy, and religious 
 hypocrisy on the one hand, and of patriotism, 
 heroic self-devotion, and unavailing courage 
 on the other, which marked the conquest. The 
 Mexicans showed themselves not inferior to 
 the Spaniards in valor, in strength, in organ- 
 ization, or even in military strategy ; but they 
 had no horses, knew nothing of gunpowder^ 
 and were otherwise less effectively equipped. 
 Their chivalry was too high. On one occa- 
 sion they sent food to the Spaniards because 
 
 20 
 
THE filEXICANS 
 
 they disdained to fight a starving foe. Their 
 superstition made them, and particularly 
 Montezuma himself, very susceptible to the 
 deceit of the Spaniards. Even with all these 
 disadvantages, however, it would have re- 
 quired far greater forces than Cortez led to 
 overcome them if, instead of having thousands 
 of native allies, he had found all the tribes 
 united against him. Like Greece in its fall, 
 the native people lost their chance of per- 
 petuity and continued development by not 
 being able to stand united against the alien 
 invader. Their downfall can scarcely be told 
 with more dramatic effect in romances like 
 Wallace's "The Fair God" than it is in a 
 supposedly matter-of-fact history like Pres- 
 cott's "The Conquest of Mexico." 
 
 Though it is not strange that ]\Iexicans 
 even of Spanish blood should celebrate the 
 independence of their nation, there is some- 
 thing a little curious in the fact that, review- 
 ing all this early history, they identify them- 
 selves throughout in thought and sentiment 
 with the Indians rather than with the con- 
 quistadores. The finest statue between the 
 heart of the capital and the castle of Chapul- 
 tepec, on one of the finest avenues of the 
 
 21 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 world, is a statue of Cuauhtemoc, the Aztec 
 prince who refused to tell the Spaniards the 
 whereabouts of his nation's treasure. A visit 
 to the Academy of Fine Arts will fill the 
 stranger with admiration of the same fact. 
 Sculpture and painting, poetry and the elo- 
 quence of public speech, have all been devoted 
 to magnifying the dignity, the generosity, the 
 courage of the native race. Between the 
 purest Castilian and the most thoroughly 
 Indian elements of the people, Mexican pa- 
 triotism knows no division in this. The con- 
 quered, not the conquering heroes, are the 
 heroes and fathers of the nation. The ardent 
 Mexican of any class resents being taken for 
 a Spaniard. 
 
Ill 
 
 GOING 
 
 THERE are now several ways of ap- 
 proach to Mexico ; but the historic way 
 is by H avan a and VeraXIruz. It was 
 from the governor of Cuba that Cortez re- 
 ceived his commission to go in jquest. a£-gold- 
 and adventure in j^lS ; and while he was not 
 the first Spaniard to visit the Mexican coast, 
 nor Vera Cruz the first place that his vessels 
 touched, yet the successful invasion of the 
 country began with his landing there in the 
 spring of 1519. It would take a long story 
 to tell of all the invaders and adventurers that 
 have made Vera Cruz their port since his 
 time, despite the absence of any protected 
 harbor. This lack made Cortez destroy his 
 fleet, and was never remedied till about the 
 beginning of the twentieth century. As for 
 railroads, even a generation ago when the 
 building of one from the United States was 
 ■proposed, the rulers of Mexiic® were accus- 
 tomed to forbid it, saying, "Between the 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 strong and the weak tlie desert is a necessity." 
 ^ It was in l^SA that railroad connection was 
 first established. The land route, therefore, 
 is not taken by any one wishing to reconstruct 
 the past; and even for a present sense of the 
 individuality of our neighbor nation v/e Should 
 not choose to step over the imaginary border 
 line from a town nominally American but 
 still in a degree Mexican, to a town nominally 
 Mexican but already a good deal American- 
 ized. The broad track of the ocean, not the 
 narrow glistening rail, shall take us to the 
 land of our pilgrimage. 
 
 Leaving New York on a sleety and cruel 
 Thursday of December or January, we slip 
 down the East River, remaining on deck, 
 whatever the cold, and letting the impression 
 of our own perpendicular metropolis fix itself 
 as strongly as it will on our departing vision. 
 So we have said "good-bye" to the exigent 
 Land of Now and have determined the picture 
 that will return to us for contrast when Ave 
 look on older cities in the "land of manana" 
 the land of the long yesterday and the un- 
 tried to-morrow. If we sight again any shore 
 of the former country it will be as those who 
 pass by, and with a feeling of detachment. 
 
 24 
 
GOING 
 
 We find ourselves aboard a steamer which 
 one member of the company, much traveled 
 on trans-Atlantic Largitanias, can scarcely 
 regard without amusement at its littleness. 
 There is, however, a well-seasoned old cap- 
 tain, for this voyage a plain passenger like 
 the rest of us, who says that our supercilious 
 friend will change his estimate of the Morro 
 Castle. The fastest vessel of the Ward Line, 
 she is admirable also for the steadiness of her 
 going in all weathers. As for size, not many 
 years ago there was no craft afloat that could 
 belittle a ship of 9,500 tons. 
 
 This captain, born and grown in Ayr, Scot- 
 land, and as fond and proud of Bobbie BurnS' 
 as becomes a good Ayrshireman, is just re- 
 turning from a visit home after several years' 
 work for "the Pearsons" at Vera Cruz and 
 elsewhere. If we don't know who the Pear- 
 sons are, he evidently thinks that we ought to 
 know; and doubtless we shall learn before we 
 have finished our tour. On arriving in Vera 
 Cruz, if we like he will take us aboard one 
 of their dredging schooners, of which he was 
 once in command. Now he is to become chief 
 pilot of the new port of Salina Cruz, over 
 on the Pacific. 
 
 35 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 The Scottish captain is not the only inter- 
 esting passenger. On a ship bound for Liver- 
 pool or Hamburg one might find the list 
 made up of persons like oneself, bent on 
 merely "doing" the objective country or coun- 
 tries and then returning with the supposed 
 gains of the expedition all jumbled or nicely 
 assorted in their heads. But these people 
 bound foj.* Mexico are to be charged with no 
 such levity. They set out with as many 
 large and grave desires as were ever regis- 
 tered at Wishing Gate. The young man with 
 pink cheeks and curly locks has accepted in 
 high hope of advancement a position as secre- 
 tary to an American railway official; and his 
 parents, who think that every Mexican car- 
 ries two pistols and a wicked heart, bade him 
 a tremulous farewell at the wharf. The dark, 
 resolute-looking, "tailor-made" girl is a school 
 teacher, now to become a missionary, whose 
 parents, if she has any, probably sent her 
 from them with Spartan or Puritan fortitude. 
 That angular coimtryman of ours with the 
 long nose is going to bring suit against the 
 Mexican Federal government for having di- 
 verted the natural water supply from a 
 property in which he is interested, He can 
 
GOING 
 
 discourse to you roundly about the devious- 
 ness and perversity of the courts down there 
 and of their servility to the wishes of the 
 Executive. He, however, will bring pressure 
 to bear from without, if no satisfaction is 
 given; and he has an English partner who 
 will apply for redress also through the British 
 representative. The very quiet man in the 
 modest clothes may be a professional gambler, 
 the engineer of a mine three days' saddle ride 
 from any railroad, or a United States secret- 
 service man appointed to find out something 
 or other at personal risk. There is a former 
 ship's doctor going to set up practice in a 
 new "camp," and an old man making, for 
 him, a really perilous journey to learn the 
 truth about a mine in which his savings are 
 invested. The mine has been paying since 
 the days of Captain Drake, who may have 
 enjoyed some indirect dividends, but the man- 
 agement changes from time to time and will 
 bear investigation. The brown, gesticulating 
 group that you have noticed, who talk Spanish 
 too fast to be understood by the Cortina 
 method, are on their way home to Guatemala. 
 The small but efficient-looking young Mexi- 
 can and his quite dazzlingly beautiful bride 
 
 27 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 have spent two weeks of their honeymoon in 
 New York, where the senora, lately senorita, 
 found her greatest delight in the Hippodrome. 
 Do not on that account question her culture 
 or her seriousness. Her playing on the ship's 
 piano to-night was brilliant. She can discuss 
 with meaning the literature of either her own 
 language or ours. She and her husband are 
 loyal but not implicit Catholics, with advanced 
 political ideas ; and they assured us that while 
 they did not favor revolution in 1911, never- 
 theless. President Diaz being safely retired, 
 they and scores of thousands would resist the 
 succession of any but a progressive man. She 
 is interested in social advancement and has 
 herself been a teacher of the poor on her 
 father's plantation. In a little aside she de- 
 clared her conviction that Mexican girls be- 
 come model wives in their faithfulness and 
 their devotion to all the interests of their hus- 
 bands, but generally the Mexican man is not 
 so good a husband as the American of her 
 acquaintance. If her own husband were not 
 an exception, of course, as touching this sub- 
 ject, she would hold her finger upon her lips 
 forever. 
 
 This business of reviewing our fellow-pas- 
 
GOING 
 
 sengers, some consultation of Terry's and 
 Campbell's guide-books, a little study of 
 Spanish, a good deal of parading the deck, 
 and hours given to the sights of the sea, will 
 fill the next week or more. We are due to 
 arrive at Vera Cruz on Friday, but Captain 
 Ayrshire says we probably shan't — Sunday 
 morning is more likely; — and so we may as 
 well sink into comfortable acquiescence. The 
 study of Spanish, even, may be dispensed with 
 altogether, for the ship's stewards are all 
 Americans or Britons and we are advised one 
 can make one's way anywhere in Mexico now 
 by the aid of English alone, so general has its 
 use become. This is demonstrated by many 
 tourists every year. Yet by the aid of from 
 fifty to two hundred Spanish words and a 
 little knowledge of the grammar, one can 
 travel with added pleasure and satisfaction. 
 Often a clerk or waiter who is advertised to 
 speak English will understand better even the 
 most limited and halting Spanish. The Mexi- 
 can people everyw;here appreciate any evi- 
 dence that a stranger has taken pains to learn 
 a little of their idioma, which is probably of 
 all languages the easiest, as it is certainly one 
 of the most rewarding of casual study. 
 
 29 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 The first event will be the sight, early Sun- 
 day morning, of palms above an amber beach 
 that some one says is Florida. We think we 
 have heard the name in connection with the 
 doings of one De Leon. As for our much- 
 traveled friend, he has heard that there is 
 wireless connection along the coast and goes 
 to ask if the Aerogram for the day is issued 
 yet. He is interested, not in the Fountain of 
 Youth nor in a mythical El Dorado, but in 
 the success of the orange crop. All day Sun- 
 daj?" this low land and the flotilla of keys that 
 trail away to the southward will be visible, the 
 canvas of many sailing vessels contrasting 
 prettily with the green of the islands. When 
 the sun goes down among them, imagination 
 may flash forward at once to New Old Spain, 
 in its larger conception; for on the morrow 
 we shall find ourselves, not in Mexico to be 
 sure, but in Cuba. 
 
 At daybreak Monday morning on the first 
 voyage that I took we were called and told 
 that Morro Castle was in sight. The name 
 filled us with a not unpleasant excitement 
 then, for the incidents of the American war 
 with Spain had not yet passed from tense 
 actuality into the calm atmosphere of things 
 
 80 
 
GOING 
 
 historic. We were entering the tragical pres- 
 ence of the battleship Maine, through a por- 
 tentous gateway, on our way to a foreign, ro- 
 mantic, and more or less enchanted city. It 
 was a great moment. There, sure enough, 
 was the castle at the left, there were the an- 
 swering batteries on the other side, and there 
 were we, breathlessly stealing in between the 
 two terrors. This feeling gave way almost 
 instantly to another, an appreciation of 
 beauty that can no more be described than it 
 can be forgotten. With its tower lamp held 
 up' like a yellow blossom against the flush of 
 dawn, the castle, for all its bulk, has no frown- 
 ing reality. Its lines and those of the ram- 
 part farther in must have been hard enough 
 once; but the mellow hue of decay, the half- 
 concealment of venerable trees, and other 
 quieting touches have at last subdued it all to 
 a picture of loveliness. Beyond spreads the 
 wide harbor, and along it the low-built town 
 of many colors, all harmonious in the dim 
 light, its sky line varied by many palm trees 
 and here and there by church towers that could 
 not belong in any Anglo-Saxon country. 
 
 The flag of the United States was floating, 
 over the castle just then, and our ship cast 
 
 31 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 anchor near the wreck of the Maine. I hired 
 a russet-colored man with a heavy boat and 
 a tattered red sail, hare feet, and a yellow 
 cigarette to take me around the wreck. We 
 went ashore and visited among other things 
 the old Cathedral, where the sexton assured us 
 of as much history as he could by declaring 
 several times with a good deal of emphasis, 
 "Columbus — ashes! Ashes — Columbus!" We 
 understood this kind of Spanish very well, 
 as far as it went, and our guide-books re- 
 minded us how Columbus was first buried ac- 
 cording to his own wish on the island of Santo 
 Domingo; how, later, in 1795, when the 
 French took the island, certain bones purport- 
 ing to be his were brought from there to 
 Haj^na, and how, in 1898, when in turn Cuba 
 was lost to the Spaniards, they took the relics 
 away with them to Seville. 
 
 In this city of 400,000 inhabitants we began 
 to appreciate a few of the facts, to see char- 
 acteristic pictures, and to feel the proverbial 
 spell of Latin America. The republics to 
 southward of us have two of the five largest 
 cities on the western continent, and may boast 
 a half dozen cities all larger than Havana, 
 which, however, surpasses Antwerp, Dublin, 
 
GOING 
 
 or Hong Kong. In any of them Anachro- 
 nism, a figure that walks openly enough in 
 every modern town, would be as plain to 
 northern eyes as here, and show as pleasing 
 guises. 
 
 Cuba should have only passing mention on 
 our way. We were aboard again before sun- 
 down. The view of Havana from an out- 
 bound ship at nightfall is most beautiful. 
 There is no bewilderment of lights as in New 
 York, but a thin line of sparks like a string 
 of gems dangles along the shore for miles, a 
 suifused glow reveals the outlines of things 
 even more romantically than they appeared in 
 the morning; and the personality that one 
 ascribes to every harbor city appears at Ha- 
 vana to be one of tenderness, as thus seen and 
 left. 
 
 Sea life is more abundant and varied in the 
 Gulf than in the Atlantic. Flying fishes, like 
 little creatures of silver, are passed frequently, 
 and from time to time a school of porpoises, 
 bent on making their way across the path 
 of the ship, recall the antics of sheep bolting 
 through a gateway. There is such a thing as 
 heavy grace, and the porpoise at play em- 
 bodies it. 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Three days from our arrival at Havana, or 
 two days and an added night of actual sailing, 
 bring us to the west coast of Yucatan. This 
 time there is no gateway with ancient castles 
 for newel posts, no enclosed harbor with space 
 for a thousand ships, no domes and towers to 
 enhance the sky line, no murmurs of an in- 
 dolent city's awakening. There is nothing but 
 the word of the officers to tell you that you 
 are riding opposite Progreso, the port of 
 Merida, which is the capital of Yucatan and 
 has more per capita wealth than any other city 
 in Mexico. No place could be more devoid 
 of shelter ; and while Progreso is an important 
 discharging point, the estimates of cost for an 
 artificial harbor have always in the past been 
 such as to discourage the undertaking. A 
 plan now under consideration is expected to 
 cost over twenty millions of dollars. If you 
 inquire, you will be told that there is no better 
 place along the whole Yucatan coast. "We 
 used to stop at Campeche," says the quarter- 
 master, "and that's over a hundred miles far- 
 ther south. It looked as bad and was in fact 
 worse. When off Campeche you saw nothing 
 but water and sky, with a little rim of sand 
 between. Yucatan has no harbors." 
 
 34 
 
GOING 
 
 But we have not begun to make acquaint- 
 ance with Progreso. The delay must be par- 
 doned as it is unavoidable. 
 
 The authorities forbid the landing of a per- 
 son or a pound till the medical officer of the 
 port has honored us with a visit and inspec- 
 tion. In this they follow the American ex- 
 ample. The Senor Doctor, however, has too 
 much dignity, too much appreciation of com- 
 fort, too much regard for social amenities 
 among his friends, to follow the abrupt, mat- 
 ter-of-fact business ways of his American 
 counterpart. If the breeze is too stiff or if 
 the clouds seem to threaten, if there is a bull- 
 fight or a wedding afoot, or if he is engaged 
 in a friendly game of cards, clearly it would 
 be inconvenient for him to come out. On one 
 visit of mine the twelve-hour stop of the 
 steamer was lengthened to forty-eight, and on 
 another to sixty-five. We may as well gen- 
 eralize, therefore, about the configuration 
 along the peninsula, about the habits of cer- 
 tain public functionaries, about human prog- 
 ress toward the millennium or toward the 
 vanishing point. For it is impossible, even 
 on ship-board, to talk all the time about one's 
 meals. 
 
 35 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 When all else fails we can look overboard 
 at the sharks. This has a fascination, un- 
 canny enough in daytime, but of multiplied 
 power and hatefulness at night, for often 
 there are lamps by which the ghastly and 
 noiseless forms can be discerned. Yes, they 
 will come up in plain sight enough, and not 
 by ones and twos but by the half-dozen. To 
 be sure, they cannot, ht)wever they try, pro- 
 duce quite the applique effect seen in Wins- 
 low Homer's painting of the "Gulf Stream." 
 They must remain suspended in and some- 
 what identified with the medium that they 
 infest; and there is a certain unreality about 
 one of them, however obvious he makes him- 
 self. Is it not so with all creatures of prey — 
 the tiger, the owl, or the pirate ship, if you 
 ever observed any of them in their haunts? 
 You are not so sure of them as of a cow, 
 or a lumber barge. Still, the sharks at Pro- 
 greso will do all that you have any right to 
 expect in the interest of verification and 
 definiteness. They are so tame, the officers 
 of the Ward Line have been quoted as saying, 
 that they "will eat from a person's hand — or 
 leg." They will take a hook if you bait it 
 with a chunk of fish or odorous meat as large 
 
 36 
 
GOING 
 
 as a ham, and you can try the muscular sense 
 upon them. When you have brought one up 
 to the surface, with the help of fellow-pas- 
 sengers, and have lost your only hook, the 
 mate will assure you that they are much easier 
 to "drown" than a bass if you work them 
 rightly, and that the only way to land one 
 is with a runnin' bowlin' around his tail. 
 
 Nights at Progreso are lonely to a stranger 
 on deck. Perhaps there is no doctor whose 
 business it is to come out and examine us. Per- 
 haps there isn't any town, though there are a 
 few lights over there to the eastward that look 
 human and wistful. Everything ashore, for 
 aught that we can tell, may be as when Fran- 
 cisco Cordoba skirted this coast in 1517. 
 Nothing is very certain. One passenger who 
 had spent two days and nights thus with the 
 sharks and the gulls, the water and the sky, 
 the warm, unctuous air, the distant lights, and 
 the solitude put his mood into rather senti- 
 mental verse : 
 
 What meaning have the terms of space — 
 What is it to be near, or far? 
 I have not altered, though apace 
 Removed, nor felt that your loved face 
 Would alter, or the inward grace 
 That makes you what you are. 
 37 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 And what reality has time? 
 
 Is this not hard to understand — 
 
 Half miserable, half sublime, — 
 
 That now my thoughts with yours may chime 
 
 And still for lagging Fortune's prime 
 
 I wait, to grasp your hand? 
 
 I do not know, but while to-night, 
 In low, companionable tone. 
 The waves console each other — ^bright 
 The long familiar star^, and sight 
 Peers home to every landward light, — 
 I know I am alone! 
 
 At times the port is far from lonesome, and 
 humor is more natural than melancholy. I 
 saw a half dozen American and European 
 vessels there at one time, some having waited 
 three daj^s already for the perfunctory atten- 
 tion of the port officers. It is diverting to 
 imagine the inside appearance of a man's 
 mind who can thus make large numbers of 
 persons and great values in property wait for 
 release upon his petty convenience and then 
 can show himself complacent and polite as if 
 nothing incongruous had happened. Cer- 
 tainly he has not a Yankee sense of the ab- 
 surd. "And so that is the Mexican way, is 
 it!" you exclaim. Well, it is a familiar way 
 .among certain grades of officials. 
 
 38 
 
GOING 
 
 Once the embargo is removed, there will 
 be doings about the ship almost interesting 
 enough to make one stay aboard. Cattle will 
 be lifted either by the horns or in slings out 
 of the hold and dropped into the "lighters" 
 that have come alongside. A great many 
 American cattle of good breeds go to Yuca- 
 tan, you are told. If you have been studying 
 Spanish you will enjoy the admonition "Poco 
 a poco!" ("Little by little") as pianos are 
 deposited bottom-side up in another lighter. 
 You may see currants from Italy, butter from 
 Denmark, and corn from the United States, if 
 it so happens. You will learn that Yucata n 
 imports nearly everything and exports chiefly 
 one thing, hgnegyuin, which is the fiber of a 
 kind of century plant used to make binding 
 jbffiine for reapers, coarse inferior rope, and 
 cheap brushes. You wonder that the rest of 
 the world can afford to send to Yysat&n the 
 means of subsistence in exchange for such a 
 commodity; and you are told that in fact a 
 mere subsistence is a small part of what the 
 rest of the world has accorded most owners 
 of henequin plantations. As for the workers 
 in it, they must be considered separately. 
 One puzzling thing is the incredible activity 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of the barefoot workers in these native barges. 
 You are told that they receive, too, an almost 
 incredible stipend, for Mexico, a dollar and 
 a half per day. They earn whatever they are 
 paid. Only monkeys or squirrels are expected 
 to be so nimble, only horses to be so strenu- 
 ous and unstinting of energy. They do not 
 illustrate your general idea of Mexican lassi- 
 tude. You make note of them, but as yet 
 they remain unclassified. 
 
 40 
 
IV 
 
 HENEQUIN 
 
 BY the time the ship's tender is ready to 
 leave, you have decided that after all 
 you had better go ashore. You have 
 already seen enough of the "lightering" prq- 
 cess to give you a notion of the rest. 
 
 Progreso, you discover, isn't anything but a 
 __^opd lighthouse and a port without a harbor, 
 which stands second to Vera Cruz in the re- 
 public for quantity of imports received. If 
 the government builds the proposed jetties, 
 their necessary length will be four or five 
 miles. As for the town, it is credited with 
 5000 inhabitants whose dwellings straggle a 
 considerable distance along the beach. It has 
 a park, a church that cost more money to 
 build than a town of like size would afford at 
 home, a bull-ring, a market that will offer a 
 great variety of sensations to eye and ear 
 without undue offense to the nostrils, and a 
 railway station by which one may leave for 
 Merida. 
 
 41 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 It is a low, flat country, with little vegeta- 
 tion except scrub trees and presently the 
 henequin, which you easily distinguish because 
 of its arrangement in straight rows. The 
 plants, if allowed to grow haphazard, would 
 arouse no suspicion of their being worth any- 
 thing, gray-green, juiceless-looking, sword- 
 shaped leaves radiating from a gnarled stalk, 
 and growing out of a dry, dust-and-ashes- 
 looking soil, if indeed they do not grow out 
 of the limestone itself. Stan(Jing valiantly in 
 their rows, however, they command instant 
 respect, and knowing that they extract an- 
 nually twenty million dollars' worth of value 
 (American money) from the unfertile soil of 
 the peninsula, you can easily view them as 
 typifying man's subjugation of the world. 
 The poorer the soil for any other crop, the 
 more sturdily henequin is said to grow upon 
 it, and the larger the quantity of growth, the 
 better also the quality of fiber. 
 
 At intervals you will see a little hamlet or 
 the buildings of a plantation with its wind- 
 mills. A clump of palms marks the location 
 of a well. Water of excellent quality is said 
 to abound in Yucatan, but it is all under- 
 ground water, which must be drilled for and 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 pumped. The soil for gardens and most field 
 crops has also to be brought artificially, the 
 rocks being first broken by blasting. So you 
 no longer wonder at the variety of imports 
 that you saw coming ashore from your own 
 and other vessels, though you had supposed 
 perhaps that corn would come more cheaply 
 from some parts of Mexico. Surely in parts 
 of the country, being the staple food of the 
 poor, it must be cheaper than in Nebraska. 
 So indeed it is in parts, and at times; but 
 you are told that crops have been bad for 
 two or three years and transportation and 
 other facilities being as they are and the de- 
 mand in each Mexican state so nearly equal- 
 ing the production, American corn is to be 
 had at less cost. This does not wholly dis- 
 miss the subject from your mind. Butter 
 from Kansas or from Denmark at a peso a 
 pound does not stagger you, nor currants at 
 any price, because, as Mark Twain declared 
 about principles, one can do without them; 
 but that the poor, who must have their corn, 
 should be buying it from the United States 
 disturbs our feeling that the low compensa- 
 tion of labor is doubtless adjusted somehow 
 to Iqw costs in a bountiful land. 
 
 43 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 From the car windows you catch glimpses 
 of the poor natives and reflect that they have 
 at least one economic advantage, that of need- 
 ing few clothes. At the same time you will 
 become aware of a merit in them — such gar- 
 ments as they wear are astonishingly clean. 
 This is not a condescending remark that on 
 the whole, considering poverty and ignorance, 
 they do very well; it goes farther than that. 
 For in fact it is hard to conceive how people 
 can trudge up and down the dusty roads bear- 
 ing their burdens, in and out through the 
 dusty fields at their toil, and keep their white 
 clothing so spotless as these people do. It 
 makes one lift up one's head in pride. If the 
 evolution theory is a correct guess, to be a 
 human being is after all a great thing and 
 must signify a long upward process. The 
 Mayas, who are the native race of Yuca±an, 
 did not, learn from the Spaniards to weave 
 their cloth, nor to cut and drape it in simple 
 grace, nor to color in native dyes their threads 
 with which to embroider it. As for keeping it 
 clean, if you study that habjt,among them you 
 will conclude that it also must have been a long 
 time fixed. 
 
 Another comforting observation is that, 
 44 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 whatever the wage scale, or the submergence 
 below any such, whatever the cost of living, 
 the seeming scantiness of fare, or the rate of 
 mortality, these are not an emaciated people. 
 Their well-rounded limbs, flat backs and full 
 chests, well-poised heads and full contour of 
 face do not^tell of starvation. It must be that 
 to some conditions for which writers have 
 pitied them, they are adapted by immemorial 
 breeding. You will find this same observa- 
 tion holds in other parts of the republic (we 
 call it so for convenience) ; and you had bet- 
 ter draw all proper comfort from it, as some 
 of the standard tests of well-being will show 
 badly enough when you come to apply them. 
 
 While the train speeds along its level and 
 easy way, you speculate further about these 
 golden-bronze men and women with their glis- 
 tening white garments and their statuesque 
 figures. Is it not an Oriental f^ct about them 
 that they can be well fed upon almost nothing, 
 and are they not Oriental in the calm continu- 
 ance of their own ways of dress and their own 
 style of habitation? For even the wretchedly 
 poor do give some hints of what architecture 
 they approve. Here are questions that the 
 learned have, perhaps, not considered specifi- 
 cs 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 cally, though the larger general one as to 
 origins has been often before them. 
 
 Recurring to cleanliness, you ask whether 
 all Mexican laborers are like these. Your more 
 way-wise companion will counsel you not to 
 press that query but only to mark these that 
 you have seen in your note-book. 
 
 Whoever these people are, you will remem- 
 ber them with gratitude for having made 
 spots so vivid in a barren landscape. 
 
 We are traveling now under an arrange- 
 ment with the Yucatan Tours Bureau, so cabs 
 _jdll await us on our arrival in Merida. It 
 has a populatioBr above 40j000 and the reputa- 
 tion of being the cleanest city of all Mexico. 
 Its well-washed asphalt pavements, the order- 
 liness of the business streets, and the look of 
 freshness about the buildings in general jus- 
 tify this title. 
 
 You will be sure to notice the beauty of 
 some of the gardens, and will be told not only 
 that every tree and shrub had to be planted, 
 but that the very soil in which they grow had 
 to be transported and paid for by the cubic 
 meter. The vegetable gardens of the city are 
 grown by Chinese, who gather up every scrap 
 of refuse capable of being used as fertilizer. 
 
 46 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 In the way of sights you will be taken to 
 a half-million-dollar theater, to a cathedral 
 finished in 1598 at a cost of $150,000, 
 to the house of Monte jo, built by a Span- 
 ish worthy of that name in 1549, or only a 
 little over half a century after the first voy- 
 age of Columbus. You will be. taken also to 
 the Government Palace and will note that it 
 is a substantial structure, but will not care for 
 details. Very soon one learns in Mexico that 
 the things to see are not "the sights." The 
 picture of the city in general, with its 
 many gesticulating windmills, the occasional 
 glimpses of beautiful courts within the solid 
 old dwellings, the unexpected presence of a 
 few houses that would not be amiss in Balti- 
 more, the panorama of strangely varied life — 
 this is what feeds the imagination more than 
 concrete and particular show objects. Cosmo- 
 politan-Jooking Mexicans and cosmopolitan- 
 looking strangers mingle with the most out- 
 landish-looking foreigners and the most char- 
 acteristically garbed of Mexicans — the women 
 with their idealizing mantillas and the men 
 with their abnormally big sombreros balanced 
 above abnormally slim legs. Here, too, come 
 the Mayas in their cotton with colored bor- 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 ders, their quiet self-possession, and their Ori- 
 ental reserve. Mexicans will tell you that 
 Yucatan is very clannish and express a hope 
 that this aloofness may be overcome a little by 
 such compliments as the one paid them by the 
 election of a Yucatecan, Senor Pino Suarez, 
 to be Madero's Vice-President. Of course 
 you politely hope so too, but it does not sur- 
 prise you to hear that the people here are 
 peculiar and separate. 
 
 If you can you will visit the museum, and 
 will regret that you have not a day for the 
 statuary and other Maya curios here pre- 
 served. You will be certain later, however, 
 to visit the National Museum at the capital, 
 where a mere tourist can do more in a given 
 length of time. 
 
 If you are to continue with the same ves- 
 sel, you will see nothing of the world-famous 
 ruins of Yucatan, those gigantic and ponder- 
 ous as well as beautiful relics of a people 
 whose forefathers, as some scholars believe, 
 may have been the earliest of human kind. 
 Again, if you must, you will console yourself 
 in your purpose to see other ruins, not like 
 these and not so old, it may be, but of such 
 character and such antiquity as to fill us with 
 
 48 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 the same awe of the greatness of the past in 
 our western hemisphere. If, on the other 
 hand, you can spare a week till the next 
 steamer, as I never could, you may 
 easily spend a day or two on a hene- 
 quin plantation, and visit the most ac- 
 cessible Yucatan ruins, those of Uxmal. The 
 ruins cover square miles of area and consti- 
 tute only one of many groups in Yucatan. 
 They do not need to be reconstructed by the 
 imagination and the patience of the archas- 
 ologist; they stand clear and real for the eye 
 and the camera of whoever seeks them out, 
 not only in the solidity of their age-old walls 
 but in the loveliness, astonishing variety, and 
 unexplainable subject-matter of their decora- 
 tions. Elephants, leopards, and other animals 
 not associated in our minds with any 
 American civilization are plainly repre- 
 sented. How old are they? How old 
 is Egypt? There are serious and pains- 
 taking scholars who believe that the wondrous 
 builders of these colossal and rich palaces, 
 temples, and tombs were as early in their 
 progress as the builders and sculptors of the 
 Nile valley. They are old. But you do not 
 wish to tarry with one who knows them only 
 
 49 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 from having gone over books and printed 
 views in delight and amazement. John L. 
 Stephens has written about them, and there 
 are later supplemental writings. 
 
 So it is recent history to recall that Span- 
 iards caught sight of the peninsula in 1506 or 
 that they landed upon it in 1518, or that they 
 made their first settlement in 1528. The voy- 
 ages of Columbus himself were but a little 
 while ago. 
 
 It will not take much travel to suggest, and 
 any added travel will only confirm the impres- 
 sion, that Yucatan is somehow related to 
 Florida, though geologists doubt or deny it. 
 The train ride from Progreso.to Merida across 
 the low land with its scrubby growth and its 
 many pools and marshes would have called up 
 remembrances of certain Florida scenery even 
 if one had not just sailed along the keys that 
 are like the dotted line between two heavy 
 pen strokes. Yucatan is not to be thought of 
 as coming under our first general description 
 of Mexico at all, for it compares with the 
 main land as Florida compares with the Rocky 
 Mountain country. 
 
 There is likely to be less haste in getting 
 back to the steamer than there was to catch 
 
 60 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 the morning train. In Progreso a visit can 
 be made to one of the great sisal (henequin) 
 warehouses and time can be taken to notice 
 the quahty and quantity of the material ranged 
 in great 400-pound bales upon the wharves. 
 Here, as on the plantations, little mules pro- 
 pel the flat cars that convey it along narrow- 
 gauge tramways; and the bales mass up as do 
 cotton-bales on the wharves at New Orleans, 
 by the thousand. 
 
 No one who has been reading about Mex- 
 ico can leave Merida and Progreso without 
 asking as to the status of the people who do 
 the work on the plantations. On my last trip 
 I devoted a large part of my time to just this 
 inquiry. The revolution was not yet accom- 
 plished and President Diaz was still in nom- 
 inal control. 
 
 Are Yaquis deported here from far-away 
 Sonora? Yes, certainly, as a war measure. 
 
 Are they ill treated? They are accorded 
 the same treatment that the native Mayas re- 
 ceive. There is no occasion to treat them with 
 special severity since they are as industrious, 
 peaceable, and dependable as any workers in 
 the republic. After all, however, they are 
 somewhat undesirable in one respect, that they 
 
 61 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 die very rapidly when brought to this climate 
 so diflferent from their own. 
 
 What is implied by saying that they are 
 treated like the Maya laborers? Are they 
 .slaves? No one uses the word slave in Mex- 
 ico. The laws and the Constitution forbid 
 slavery. The people are held without sanc- 
 tion of law, but with the connivance of the 
 government in a feudal bondage to the land. 
 The owner of the land exercises a power 
 whose limits are seldom discussed, and the 
 people look to him for whatever protection, 
 guidance, and means of subsistence they are 
 to have. 
 
 Can they leave at will? Not if they are in 
 debt, as is usually the case. A shrewd em- 
 ployer, even though a kindly one, will usually 
 find opportunity to bring that about — ^trans- 
 portation if they come to him from a distance, 
 marriage fees, baptism fees, or what not, ren- 
 der most of them willing borrowers. To Mexi- 
 cans just a degree more intelligent, of course 
 debt is a mortal terror. 
 
 Can they be transferred at the will of the 
 owner? He can transfer his debt-claim, yes. 
 But he seldom wishes to, except when he sells 
 the land, as labor is scarce. 
 
 52 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 Are the slaves — that is the workers — ever 
 beaten, or otherwise maltreated? Doubtless, 
 sometimes, but sensational books exaggerate. 
 A great many owners are kind to their work 
 people. Some make great personal effort and 
 sacrifice for their welfare, and feel it a serious 
 responsibility. Food, housing, personal treat- 
 ment, and exactions of labor vary, of course, 
 with different owners. 
 
 Still, if there should be here and there a 
 cruel owner or overseer, the laborers are at 
 his mercy, are they not? What redress have 
 they? Well, there are shyster lawyers who 
 will take the case of such laborers, but often 
 the workers find the attempt difficult and 
 dangerous. The fact is the authorities have 
 favored a pretty tight hold on the only kind 
 of labor that seems possible here; and that 
 means a pretty strong exercise of control by 
 the owners. 
 
 If a man owes fifty dollars which I am will- 
 ing to pay in order to secure his service, can 
 he go away with me of his own choice? You 
 would have to get his employer to go before 
 a judge and sign a release, indicating that all 
 the man's debt is discharged by your payment 
 of fifty dollars. 
 
 63 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Then the fact is that by my help the man 
 may with difficulty free himself, and without 
 help he would certainly be unable, unless his 
 employer saw fit to release him? That is one 
 way of putting it, yes. 
 
 And what excuse is there, in a country with 
 a modern Constitution and with enlightened 
 laws on its statute books, for maintaining such 
 a system? The excuse of business necessity. 
 These people would not do the needed work 
 on a voluntary basis; and the labor problem 
 could not be met at all. The system is not de- 
 fensible by argument, it is not what it ought 
 to be, but to change it seems impossible. We 
 believe these natives are generally and for the 
 most part better off with some one both to 
 command them and to provide for them. Left 
 to themselves they are both improvident and 
 lazy. Many Mexican laborers cannot be hired 
 to work voluntarily more than two or three 
 days a week. 
 
 The above, though a composite of several 
 interviews with men in official authority, in 
 business relations, or otherwise well qualified 
 to know, represents the unanimous and, ex- 
 cept in details, the unvarying replies that 
 were given me on the points raised, I talked 
 
 04 
 
HENEQUIN 
 
 with no one of radical sympathies. It is only 
 as to frequency or infrequency of gross abuse 
 that difference of opinion exists. And with- 
 out having spent a good deal of actual time 
 among the plantations, one's opinion on this 
 must be taken either from such testimony as 
 one can gather, or from settled doctrines as to 
 the tendency of arbitrary and irresponsible 
 power and the natural effect on its unwilling 
 objects. 
 
 Every one is doctrinaire enough to infer 
 something from general principles. Standing 
 on the wharf ready for departure one looks 
 at the clean, coarse fiber in its bales, thinks of 
 its growth under the ardent but not unwhole- 
 some rays of the sun, and would be willing to 
 vote that no man should betray another sim- 
 pler man into debt and servitude in order to 
 obtain its cultivation. Free labor and a fair 
 share of its return, together with the strict 
 punishment of any one who should advance 
 money on a labor contract, might be hard for 
 existing enterprise to adjust itself to; but on 
 broad humanitarian grounds one would be 
 willing to see it honestly, bravely, and persist- 
 ently tried. Even should production fall off, 
 there are worse things conceivable. One goes 
 
 55 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 away inclined to give the exploited poor the 
 benefit of the doubt. "That is," retort the 
 defenders, "you would be willing to try ex- 
 periments at some one else's expense." There 
 are indeed many things that one might hesi- 
 tate to try at one's own expense, yet which 
 the most rudimentary justice demands. Dis- 
 interested public opinion is needed to arbi- 
 trate. 
 
 NOTE TO 1919 EDITION:— It is gratifying to know that under 
 an entirely new regime, with a governor whose political theories are 
 advanced and even radical, the people of Yucatan have entered a 
 very dififerent set of conditions. While there are conflicting opinions, 
 somewhat influenced, no doubt, by the fact that the price of American 
 binder twine has been forced upward, unquestionably the plantation 
 laborer has obtained a measure of freedom. This has been brought 
 about, too, without any intervening period of chaos or general dis- 
 order, so far as Yucatan is concerned. 
 
 '56 
 
VERA CRUZ 
 
 ABOARD again and ashore again! This 
 time, after two nights and a day, it is 
 Vera Cruz. It might have been Tam- 
 pico, another important and somewhat expen- 
 sive man-made harbor 250 miles farther north, 
 if we had cared to change lines at Progreso. 
 We should have fared worse for the rest of 
 our sea voyage, however; and unless in the 
 way of hunting or tarpon jfishing should have 
 had little reward for it. Eight days, less a 
 few hours, is the time from leaving New York 
 till you anchor at Vera Cruz, if the port in- 
 spection at Progreso is made promptly. It is 
 said that this sometimes happens. 
 
 Vera Cruz has a delightful little park with 
 so many fine trees and shrubs that its conven- 
 tionality does not appear. It has a good mili- 
 tary band to play martial and other airs in the 
 evening, and a hotel of an aspect as old as 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, from under the poT' 
 
 51 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 tal of which the band can be heard to advan- 
 tage. There are two or three hundred girls 
 who walk round the outer square of the plaza 
 making themselves part of the little poem to 
 which the trees and the music also belong. A 
 visitor who could afford to dash illusions to 
 the ground would call only a very fev/ of the 
 girls beautiful; and there are at least two or 
 three for whom an attempt at modernity has 
 resulted in the absurd. Most, however, are 
 picturesque, and have a quaintness that makes 
 them pleasant to look at in the well-filtered 
 though abundant light. They come to enjoy 
 the music and the activity, to distract the 
 minds of an equal number of less interesting 
 young men, and, perhaps, to play with some 
 mild distraction in their own pretty heads. 
 Some have older women as visible accessories, 
 for others, mother love is watchful from the 
 benches among the trees, and for still others, 
 as Vera Cruz is a coast town and has learned 
 foreign ways, perhaps no one is vigilant. The 
 girls revolve like a circlet of paper flowers in 
 one direction, and the young men in a circle 
 without take the opposite direction, by which 
 device mutual admiration may exchange 
 glances twice on each round. Still a third 
 
VERA CRUZ 
 
 circle is made up of the lower-class people, 
 men and women, who also love the music, the 
 light and flickering shadows, and the barter- 
 ing of glances — if this were worthy of notice 
 in their case. For one thing I have watched 
 them and have not seen it. There is no look 
 of envy or resentment toward those whom 
 Fortune has placed nearer the center of the 
 wheel of happiness. They belong to a docile, 
 placidly reflective race who take most things 
 for granted. Of the three revolving rings the 
 outmost is not the least satisfactory to the im- 
 agination. As for the young men, they will 
 show better in daytime, when one does not so 
 greatly miss the tight-fitting leather or velvet 
 that they ought to be wearing instead of the 
 foreign clothes which they have not yet learned 
 to wear, and when they and we have other 
 thoughts than now. One smiles at the young 
 men here in the evening. 
 
 There are Americans who eat and drink 
 too much under the portales. There are money 
 changers who demand five per cent., to en- 
 hance the better currency than their own 
 which you have to offer. There are, to be 
 sought in due time, great high-posted ■ beds 
 canopied with mosquito netting, now less 
 
 59 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 needed than a few years ago, but still not 
 amiss as a precaution; the beds are two in 
 each room, and a room is as large as a town 
 hall. If you get a front room, which is best, 
 you will have air to breathe, will see new 
 charms of the park, but will be kept awake by 
 street noises, including those of electric cars. 
 A flat wheel in Vera Cruz sounds very much 
 as it would in Hoboken. So also does a 
 phonograph whose voice is changing. 
 
 All these things are easily seen and experi- 
 enced. 
 
 You may incline to hurry away because of 
 the reputation of the port for mosquitoes and 
 fever. If your fortune is like mine recently, 
 however, you will see nothing to suggest mos- 
 quitoes but the netting over the bed. I re- 
 member when they were in evidence. As for 
 fever, in the winter months it is very rare, and 
 no longer prevalent at any season. The few 
 cases that occur are chiefly among those classes 
 who cannot or will not meet the requirements 
 of sanitation. Probably you will not take a 
 sip of water in the city, except what is bought 
 in bottles at a sufficient price ; and this is well 
 enough; but still you ought to be told that 
 the city water obtained from the Jamapa 
 
 60 
 
VERA CRUZ 
 
 River is passed through great filtration beds 
 on which a good deal of money has been 
 spent, that there is a two-million-dollar sew- 
 age system, and that conditions generally are 
 much better than they were a decade ago. No 
 one used to stay in Vera Cruz longer than 
 necessary, and any foreigner whose work held 
 him there would have his family no nearer 
 than Orizaba, 
 
 It may happen, if your steamer makes port 
 in the morning, that you will have an enforced 
 wait of a day in which to learn some of these 
 things for yourself. Then, perhaps, you will 
 make a trip to the old Castle of San Juan de 
 Ulua. Begun in 1528, built at an inflated 
 cost of forty million pesos in all, but, like 
 more recent works at Vera Cruz, done well if 
 bravely charged for in the bill, beaten upon 
 by the unlempered storms of the open sea, 
 captured more than once by buccaneers, made 
 the last stronghold of Spain in the war for 
 Mexican independence, later occupied, in 1838, 
 by the French, and again, in 1847, by an Amer- 
 ican fleet, witness in its dungeons of miseries 
 imtold, and even lately the frowning tomb of 
 many civil or political offenders in whom hope 
 was dead, Sail Juan de Ulua has a more 
 
 61 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 varied and awesome history than any other 
 fortress on the western continent. The Span- 
 iards are gone forever, and it is know^n how 
 they kept prisoners in mere manholes where 
 the tide would rise to their necks. Other cruel- 
 ties more revolting are known. The military 
 rule under which Porfirio Diaz held the coun- 
 try being so recently at an end, and his suc- 
 cessor having been less addicted to the press 
 agent than he, we do not Icnow fully what 
 uses he made of this most dreaded prison. 
 The dungeons and the manholes^ are still there ; 
 but our guide-book, published under official 
 sanction during his regime, naively says that 
 the humane government does not use them. 
 However that may have been, in November, 
 1911, President Madero ordered that all pris- 
 oners be removed from the castle to more sani- 
 tary quarters. 
 
 If you go out upon one of the jetties, at the 
 end you will see boys fishing with long lines, 
 heavy "sinkers," and large bait for fish dimin- 
 utive, though of brilliant colors; or they may 
 be flying kites out here where no trees or wires 
 obstruct. You should admire the masonry, 
 and read from your guide-book that harbor 
 protection at Vera Cruz cost four hundred 
 
 62 
 
VERA CRUZ 
 
 years and thirty million pesos ($15,000,000). 
 
 You will surely walk or ride out from the 
 main plaza to the Alameda, another more in- 
 formal park, and so out the Paseo de los 
 Cocos. The winter temperature is delightful. 
 From one of the benches on a Sunday or a 
 holiday you may review a great deal of life. 
 
 This Paseo de los Cocos has not one strik- 
 ing feature, unless the stretch of avenue and 
 park itself with the rows of graceful trees be 
 meant. Yet, to the visitor with a leisure hour, 
 there is something about the street as a whole 
 that will make itself felt as unique. There are 
 typical houses of every style that the varied 
 character of the people would suggest, includ- 
 ing the American, and of every quality from 
 that of comparative affluence to that of the 
 laborer. Whoever has traveled in the South 
 of the United States and has gone up and 
 down the streets of a negro quarter in any but 
 a very large town with his imagination alert 
 will know what is meant by saying that houses 
 of the negro-cabin type, though not all occu- 
 pied by negroes, predominate. The little dwell- 
 ings are pretty in their way, most of them, 
 and decently kept. The fine avenues of trees 
 lends to them a setting that their owners 
 
 63 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 could never have procured. The air of the 
 whole place seems one of greater content- 
 ment, of more relaxation and ease of life than 
 that of the usual street in Mexico. The 
 Mexican poor may suggest patience or abject 
 submission to a miserable state; but they sel- 
 dom show the happy abandon of the negro. 
 As you go along here there is a feeling that 
 normally the world is kind even to the poor. 
 Arrived at the end of the avenue you stand 
 by a statue of liberty whose design you will 
 soon forget, and your eye sweeps on over a 
 view of country that will not be so soon for- 
 gotten. The statue marks for these people 
 the end of what is accomplished or determi- 
 nate; but the road goes on, and there are still 
 palms that wave gracefully, and gentle hills 
 that rim in the picture, and sky that is deep 
 with haze — a soft enlargement every way that 
 if it does not summon them to largeness of 
 achievement must beguile them into largeness 
 of comfort. They are not poets or wordy 
 commentators ; but they do come out here and 
 look — ^have we not seen them doing so, quietly, 
 by families, the white, the black, the yellow, 
 and the various blends of these? If you walk 
 back along the Paseo in the gathering twilight 
 
 64 
 
VERA CRUZ 
 
 you will fancy that the natural scene is re- 
 flected in all that you pass. It may be only 
 fancy, but it is likely to remain. 
 
 There is an evening train for the highlands, 
 but if you take it you will miss the evening 
 view of the city, and, what is worse, will be 
 able to see little on the way up. So you will 
 doubtless choose to spend the night at Hotel 
 Diligencias. From your balcony when you 
 are awake you will become aware of a rather 
 fine old church fronting the park, lovely in 
 color, admirable in lines, and of impressive 
 solidity. From your vantage point at a dis- 
 tance you have seen it at its best. 
 
 You will betake yourself in the half-light 
 to the railway station, which is less than half 
 lighted, and will vaguely hope that you are 
 enough awake to have found the right way 
 out of this perilous and purgatorial state to 
 the paradise of your expectations. You will 
 have learned that a modern union station, in 
 keeping with the substantial customs houses, 
 postoffice, lighthouse, and other public build- 
 ings, is under construction; but this will not 
 relieve you of groping through the old one. 
 Make your way to the ticket window and ask 
 for a time-table and the agent will tell you 
 
 65 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 "No hay" which is pronounced as if allu- 
 ding to the darlcness, "No eye," and which 
 means that the thing desired is non-existent. 
 You will become familiar with it in Mexico 
 partly because every second-hand American 
 wag will emphasize its recurrence. As for 
 time-tables, doubtless the passenger is expect- 
 ed to carry the Gida Oficial, a monthly rail- 
 road guide to be had at trifling cost. 
 
 There is so much in anticipation that Vera 
 Cruz may seem only a gateway and you bid 
 it no lingering farewell. Yet this town, which 
 was almost a century old when Shakespeare 
 and Cervantes wrote, has a great deal of his- 
 tory that may be read before and after the 
 observations of a day; and even apart from 
 reading you may find more direct impressions 
 treasured in mind from your first day in 
 Mexico than just now you are aware. 
 
 66 
 
VI 
 
 TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 AS yet there can be no just quarrel with 
 the goings or the tarryings of our 
 journey, because they have involved 
 little choice; but henceforth there is all the 
 latitude that a great country of varying in- 
 terests affords. The visitor for a few weeks 
 must choose, then harden himself against all 
 distracting allurements. 
 
 Mexico City is in mind when Vera Cruz is 
 left, not only because it is now the capital 
 and metropolis but because in historic times 
 it has always claimed this distinction and be- 
 cause the route thither is the most famous in 
 the republic. Economy of travel, however, 
 will dictate that some other places be visited 
 earlier. We turn southward toward the Isth- 
 mus of Tehuantepec, over the Vera Cruz 
 al Istmo Railway to a restaurant with an 
 American manager and Chinese service which 
 bears the devout Castilian name of Santa 
 
 67 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Lucrecia. There may be a colony of alliga- 
 tors to swell the importance of the place, for 
 alligators do abound in parts of the Coatza- 
 coalcos River; but the freedom with which 
 native women and children bathe below the 
 iron bridge would argue that the alligators, 
 if present, are little regarded. What makes 
 Santa Lucrecia of any note is that there the 
 railroad has its junction with the trans-isth- 
 mian route called the Ferrocarril Nacional de 
 Tehuantepec. We are on our way to the 
 Pacific terminus of that line, which has been 
 in operation since 1907, which is better known 
 in Europe than in the United States, and 
 which it is prophesied will be an enduring 
 rival of the Panama Canal for all freight 
 traffic between the two oceans. 
 
 The traveler who left Vera Cruz in the 
 morning reaches Santa Lucrecia about bed- 
 time. The eating house, as one writer has 
 nicely phrased it, suggests the old California 
 mining camps with their "cheap bars and 
 camp grub." "Here," he declares, "you put 
 your zinc teaspoon into the sugar-bowl lest 
 you offend by superior ways; drink without 
 wincing if any one asks you to, and hold your 
 tongue." In a literary way I would not criti- 
 
 68 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 cise this. As to its meaning, I have never 
 tried wincing over a drink, or loosing my 
 tongue in disparagement of one already 
 taken; but I refused to drink at Santa Lu- 
 crecia with no more hesitancy than I would 
 in Saratoga; and the company, including a 
 young American engineer, an English plan- 
 tation manager, the German captain of a 
 river boat running to Coatzacoalcos, and 
 some mixed or nondescript personages did 
 not take affront. We continued talking to- 
 gether for hours till my train left, they ex- 
 ercising their liberties and I undisputed in 
 mine. 
 
 The embarrassments and perils to a "total 
 abstainer" in Mexico, by the way, are often 
 exaggerated. I have heard Americans coun- 
 seled to absent themselves from certain social 
 gatherings on the ground that it would be 
 a serious breach of amenity to refuse any- 
 thing offered; but when they disregarded the 
 advice they found their hosts as open to 
 polite explanation as Americans would be in 
 like circumstances. The Governor's family 
 in the state where I lived gave continued and 
 unmistakable demonstrations of cordiality to 
 a visitor who had declined their cognac from 
 
 69 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 the gracious hand of the Governor's wife 
 herself. Why should they not? to be sure. 
 As for the absence or unfitness of water, in 
 restaurants mineral spring water is almost 
 as omnipresent as beer; boiled milk is fur- 
 nished; and then there are always coffee, tea, 
 and chocolate, all of which have of course 
 been boiled. Lime juice is recommended on 
 good authority as a discourager of germs, so 
 that a little may wisely be squeezed into water 
 of which one is not sure. On jaunts, oranges 
 and other fruits often take the place of drink; 
 the palatable tuna or prickly pear grows on 
 some of the driest deserts. The milk of a 
 new cocoanut (coco de agua), if obtainable, 
 will quench thirst for hours. All this is of- 
 fered not as stimulating but perhaps as serv- 
 iceable information. 
 
 Santa Lucrecia is about midway between 
 the two oceans, though not at the height of 
 land, as the Pacific slope is much more abrupt 
 and the highest point, therefore, about forty 
 miles west of the middle. By west I mean 
 toward the Pacific ; and that is directly south. 
 We have been for some little time and are 
 still in a region of heavy rainfall, and the 
 country is a typical jungle in consequence; 
 
 70 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 but it will end abruptly at the ridge. The 
 difference between aridity on the Pacific slope 
 and abundant rain on the Atlantic which is 
 indicated for South America is almost equally 
 marked even here where the ridge becomes 
 low, and is narrowed to 125 miles. The west 
 side has comparatively little forest, while the 
 east has the greatest conceivable variety and 
 luxuriance of growth. 
 
 As evening had begun to lower before the 
 change from semi-desert conditions took place, 
 it will be impossible just now to get a full 
 impression of the jungle. That requires 
 either a long time or the traversing of con- 
 siderable distance. The traveler is aware at 
 the first approach of a coolness after the 
 scorching heat of mid-day on the plains, of 
 a gradual increase in vegetation until it is 
 abundant, and of the insect choir, which, 
 though different voices may enter, seems to 
 produce at nightfall the same droning effect 
 wherever and whenever heard. It is a sur- 
 prise to find that one is to have a comfortable 
 night, a thick blanket proving not unwel- 
 come. 
 
 Now the train is slipping downward over 
 the isthmus, the highest point b§ing Chivela, 
 
 71 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 at an altitude of 750 feet, and vegetation 
 begins to grow less. You may be prepared 
 to view a quite different country from your 
 car window in the morning. 
 
 If you are up betimes you will catch sight 
 of Tehuantepec, the name of which place is 
 also . the name of the Isthmus, and about 
 which you can read and hear tales to stir 
 your blood. The tales belong to the whole 
 region and some of them more specifically to 
 other towns like Juchitan, a few miles away; 
 but Tehuantepec is the name with which they 
 have become associated. They are stories of 
 a race prouder, braver, handsomer, and it 
 may be more intelligent than others round 
 about, refusing to intermarry with other 
 tribes and having tastes and standards quite 
 their own. Men and women were numeri- 
 cally proportioned to each other somewhat 
 as elsewhere, lio doubt, till the men were 
 killed off. Then the women, still disdaining 
 to marry with men of a lower type, assumed 
 the business and the leadership, and it be- 
 came a community of women. 
 
 A brother of Porfirio Diaz figures in the 
 history of this change. Being governor of 
 the state of Oaxaca, which includes the Te- 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 huantepec region, he did such wholesale vio- 
 lence to property rights, to the virtue of 
 native women, and to life itself, that he 
 could no longer be tolerated. It is said that 
 he was in the act of fleeing from the country 
 when, early in the year 1877, he was cap- 
 tured by the Indians, tortured as dreadfully 
 as he had tortured many victims, and then 
 killed. It is said that vengeance at the behest 
 of President Diaz on account of this act was 
 what prompted a massacre of nearly all male 
 inhabitants of the place long afterward, 
 though he is credited with having planned 
 to kill only every tenth male and not all 
 that the soldiers could reach, as actually 
 happened. Porfirio Diaz has not bfeen ac- 
 customed to tell his motives or explain his 
 actions, but a cold-blooded massacre did oc- 
 cur, removing a large part of the men who 
 had not been sacrificed in the long war with 
 Spain and the later civil wars; and the gen- 
 eral understanding of its motive is as just 
 suggested. 
 
 Ten years ago people said little about such 
 matters; but in the spring of 1911, when 
 they might with reason have been more cau- 
 tious than ever, I found them eager every- 
 
 73 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 where to say what they loiew and believed. 
 Books and periodicals in the United States, 
 too, have not hesitated to disclose a great 
 many things the mere hint of which, in 1910, 
 would have caused some reviewer in the New 
 York Post- to denounce the authors as guilty 
 of "ignorant abuse." To say that on the 
 whole Mexico has been ruled in a way favor- 
 able or unfavorable to ultimate high destiny 
 is perhaps not given to fallible critics at this 
 time. But that the existing rule has often 
 been accompanied by deliberate, profuse, and 
 relentless shedding of blood for over thirty 
 years every one at all familiar with the facts 
 knows. When drastic measures were taken 
 against the' lawless and violent, they had the 
 apparent sanction of necessity. A charac- 
 teristic policy of Presideot Diaz was setting 
 "a thief to catch a thief" — he mobilized com- 
 panies of bandits and organized them into 
 the "Rurales" whose duty it was to hunt 
 other bandits and render country travel safe. 
 Such a weapon in the hands of an arbitrary 
 and irresponsible ruler, however, lent itself 
 too easily, some have thought, to less justi- 
 fiable use. That intimidation and repression, 
 banishment, summary killing of individuals 
 
 74 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 guilty of no moral wrong, and now and then 
 wholesale slaughter were admirably suited to 
 the needs of the nation may be quite obvious 
 to a few minds; but to the average intelli- 
 gence it seems doubtful. 
 
 And here is Tehuantepec shifting brightly 
 across the vision in the morning light. A 
 few women at the station who might be 
 Queens of Sheba unless their garb seem too 
 brilliant, a few who look like the witch of 
 Endor, some market people carrying their 
 wares, a highway bridge over the track, a 
 strange - looking hotel with a high wall, a 
 sparsely inhabited street, lined with cocoanut 
 trees on the outskirts of the place, and some 
 bathers in the Tehuantepec River are all that 
 you see of this town of 10,000 inhabitants, as 
 you pass westward. 
 
 , I spent a night at Tehuantepec on the 
 Way back from Salina Cruz, at a hotel whose 
 proprietor, in the good English of an intelli- 
 gent Jamaican negro, declared himself an 
 "honest thief," and who justified the adjective 
 in all his dealing with me. I would not ad- 
 vise, and he would not advise, ladies of fas- 
 tidious requirements to put up at his house, 
 nor in his town. Yet if they could ignore 
 
 75 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 whatever did not look good to them they 
 might, I think, not fare badly in any respect. 
 They should find their rooms only at the hour 
 of retiring, and plan to leave them without 
 scrutiny immediately when awakened. 
 
 I walked about in the evening and early 
 morning; talked for hours with an old pros- 
 pector who has lived among the Indians in 
 their villages; inquired afterward about the 
 place and its people of officials, American and 
 Mexican; read what the books say about it; 
 and found that although a month would be 
 needed for even such study as a casual, non- 
 professional visitor would be prompted to 
 undertake, the impressions and ideas that I 
 was able to gather had the advantage of being 
 reasonably clear and consistent. 
 
 The Tehuanas live very much in their own 
 way. No intimate, everyday influence came 
 to bear on their conservatism till the rail- 
 road was completed in 1907, if even that has 
 brought any such influence to bear. Of 
 course I speak of the native Indians, not offi- 
 cials or other Mexicans from elsewhere, who 
 are as alien as the American himself. They 
 are not imitative of foreigners. Their adobe 
 houses vary in size and costliness, many being 
 
 76 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 only of two rooms, some being quite exten- 
 sive; and the furnishings differ accordingly. 
 Their dress, even if they have means to buy 
 costly materials, adheres to their own style, 
 which is simple in cut but often elaborate in 
 trimming, vivid in color, harmonious with 
 their physiognomy and bearing, graceful in 
 effect, and altogether of an Oriental sug- 
 gestion. A young woman of such beauty, 
 symmetry, and carriage that she might pose 
 for Cleopatra is as little conscious of bare 
 feet and ankles as though she lived in Cleo- 
 patra's Egypt. If a triangle of meerschaum- 
 color shows on either side above the waist- 
 band of her red skirt, it is a thing of habit and 
 she thinks nothing of it. Clothing, for the 
 most part, is to her like the silk scarf that she 
 carries over one wrist, as inseparable as the 
 Japanese girl's fan, or like the necklace of 
 gold coins that she wears — it is for adorn- 
 ment. Concealment of person is no more 
 essential to her than to Eve after the first 
 accession of modesty; but of the little require- 
 ment in this respect she is never forgetful. 
 Her modesty is as real and her sense of 
 decorum as definite as that of the civilized 
 and sophisticated American or European. 
 
 77 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Her neatness, cleanliness, and fitness of per- 
 sonal ornament are such as to give one a 
 pang when the inevitable result of outside in- 
 fluence is thought of. 
 
 Morality is a thing that strangers may 
 easily misapprehend. The morals of these 
 people are somewhat primitive, but not de- 
 graded, if the two words are in any danger 
 of being confused. Some will understand if 
 it be said that there is a good deal of un- 
 morality but very little downright immorality 
 — very little wantonness. I have heard coarse 
 men and men of careless speech declare ad- 
 miration and respect for the women of Te- 
 huantepec. 
 
 Two Tehuana girls are employed as serv- 
 ants by a cultured American woman in an- 
 other town. They are honest, and she trusts 
 a good deal to them. They are also confid- 
 ing. They do all the rough, domestic work 
 of her house. They are as quiet-mannered as 
 any guest that she entertains. Their scant 
 garments are as clean as she could wish her 
 own to be. She says that they not only bathe, 
 but wash their abundant black hair every day. 
 They would no more put on shoes than she 
 would put a ring in her nose; but they have 
 
 78 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 pretty sandals to wear when so inclined. 
 Each wears at her daily work a necklace 
 worth from a hundred to two hundred dol- 
 lars and carries the inevitable scarf. Each 
 has a more costly necldace for festal occa- 
 sions. Their straight, tapering, and daintily 
 kept fingers show no signs of toil, their slen- 
 der wrists are not thickened by the wringing 
 of clothes; they seem immune to the effects 
 that we usually think inseparable from labor. 
 And how long will they keep their youth? 
 Well, they mature early; but the Tehuana 
 matron is also a creature of dignity, keeps her 
 pride, and has a look of character. The aver- 
 age of good looks in Tehuantepec is doubt- 
 less greater than anywhere else in Mexico, 
 and the average in Mexico, to any one of 
 catholic taste, is distinctly greater than among 
 the people that most foreign observers left at 
 home. Colors and contours to delight an 
 artist are everywhere; though the wretchedly 
 poor, the aged, the lame, the halt, and the 
 blind may show as hideous marks of social 
 injustice here as elsewhere, and there are as 
 many of them in Mexico as in any fruitful 
 land under the sun. 
 
 Of men who appear to be of the same 
 79 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 stock as these women of Tehuantepec there, 
 are few enough to confirm the legend as to 
 how they were decimated. There are few 
 enough native men of any stock, though the 
 old haughty exclusiveness is breaking down 
 of late. Such men as one does see at all 
 identified with the population are itiarkedly 
 inferior to the women. So the matriarchate 
 which has been the rule for a generation will 
 doubtless prevail for at least one generation 
 more in this city of women. 
 
 Have the men of the mountains, like the 
 men of the valley settlements hereabouts, 
 been exterminated? By no means in the same 
 degree. My prospector friend told me of 
 places where a camera and tripod, if mis- 
 taken for a surveyor's instrument, may bring 
 a fusillade on its luckless possessor, and 
 where the authority of the central Mexican 
 government is not recognized, but where the 
 people are reasonably friendly if they can be 
 assured as to one's designs. There is tung- 
 sten in some of the high mountains, a good 
 deal of coal, and unestimated stores of silver, 
 iron, and other metals, the opening of which 
 might have been hastened but for the some- 
 what deterrent attitude of the mountaineers. 
 
 80 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 Yet these people, less known than the Yaquis 
 of Sonora and regarded as equally warlike, 
 may prove as little opposed to progress on 
 equitable terms as many fair writers believe 
 the Yaquis to have been. They do not trust 
 the powers that be ; and to obtain and deserve 
 their confidence would be one of the duties 
 of a progressive, enlightened government. 
 
 The most conscious object of a trip south 
 from Vera Cruz is usually to inspect the 
 remarkable railroad and two splendid harbors 
 which, at a cost of about $65,000,000, have 
 established a freight route between the Paci- 
 fic and the Atlantic shorter by four days and 
 nearer by 1250 miles than that through the 
 Panama Canal. This is a sufficient object in 
 itself. But, after all, one ought seldom to 
 travel with a single purpose. It would be 
 like throwing away the by-products of the 
 cotton industry. We are on our way to gaze 
 at the artificial harbor, the dry dock which is 
 the largest on the Pacific coast, the modern 
 electric cranes for handling freight, the cars 
 of special type for receiving their loads, the 
 special oil-burning engines, the special swamp 
 road construction, the devices for spraying 
 hot chemicals to kill the almost irrepressible 
 
 81 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 vegetation, and the other means, anachronistic 
 in this land of supposed inaction, through 
 which the uses of our heralded canal, save the 
 passing of war vessels, have been anticipated 
 by a decade. Yet we will not reproach our- 
 selves for having paused over old, forgotten, 
 far-off things. The decade or so will pass, 
 the great canal will be finished, both routes 
 may find use beyond their capacity and we 
 shall see engineering feats to transcend them 
 both; but we shall never, later, be able to 
 muse a day in the Tehuantepec that now 
 charms and baffles us. I had the privilege of 
 visiting one of the harbors and rowing about 
 the jetties in the company of an American 
 army engineer whose name is familiar to 
 most readers, and he was as much interested 
 as professionally he should be. Yet he be- 
 trayed more interest in a primitive Isthmian 
 ox-cart than in any appliance that we saw — 
 a cart entirely innocent of tire, bolt, nail, 
 buckle, or other scrap of metal; hewn out of 
 wood by rude implements; fastened together 
 by wooden pins and by thongs; a perfect, un- 
 perverted example of its type, within a 
 stone's throw of so much foreign innovation. 
 Salina Cruz is not a Mexican town and as 
 82 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 a town deserves little attention. A courteous 
 American consul and an admirable hotel con- 
 ducted by a refined American woman from 
 Kentucky or Texas or somewhere, figure in 
 the traveler's note-book as next in importance 
 to the harbor works. A day is sufiicient, and 
 next morning one starts up the slope again 
 toward the other terminus of the road. Long 
 before noon the height of land is reached. 
 This time the jungle is experienced in day- 
 light, and over such distance that its char- 
 acter may be felt. Palm trees, banana plants, 
 trees that might belong to some species fa- 
 miliar at home for all that the eye could tell, 
 undergrowth, tangles of vines, mosses, flags, 
 and lily pads make altogether a variety and 
 excess that is inconceivable. Many of the 
 trees bear flowers of showy hues, many of the 
 vines that climb up to the highest branches 
 are masses of red and purple, orchids fasten 
 themselves upon every crevice, and so the 
 vividness and variety of color become almost 
 as great a marvel as the rank prodigality of 
 growth. If you could penetrate a little into 
 the forest, it would be still more illuminated 
 by the brilliancy of birds whose kinds are 
 listed by hundreds in books. You catch occa- 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 sional glimpses of movement; but unless it 
 be a blackbird you could rarely make out the 
 cause. It might be a parrot, an oriole, or a 
 jay, all of which are so numerous that a 
 census has never been taken, though being a 
 little less impudent than the blackbirds they 
 are more difficult to observe. As for the 
 sounds, they are myriad and unending. In- 
 sects, frogs, perhaps monkeys, and no doubt 
 scores of creatures that you never heard be- 
 fore mingle their cries in a ba,bel that neither 
 the guide-book nor your well-informed neigh- 
 bor can help you to analyze. 
 
 To calculating discernment all this is a 
 challenge. Mahogany trees, five or six feet 
 thick, dye woods and medicinal plants, lus- 
 cious fruits and excellent oils are here in the 
 jungle. Here is fertility to yield- the food of 
 millions, here are riches to reward the labor, 
 the enterprise, and the prophetic vision of 
 many a bold spirit. The instinctive feeling, 
 however, is not unmixed with something 
 like horror. One sees a riot of soft but 
 malignant forms, of silent but powerful and 
 malign forces. Our fine ecstasies about virgin 
 Nature were mostly written in temperate or 
 semi-arid places where Nature is self-dis- 
 
 84 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 ciplined. Here is no exclusive survival of 
 the fittest but an indiscriminate and revolting 
 survival of everything that mere fecundity- 
 can engender and fatten. Individuality, char- 
 acter, symbolism, as we ascribe them to out- 
 door objects at home, are foreign to this mass 
 of vegetables. Here are no tongues in trees, 
 nor books in the running brooks. The axe 
 and the bush hook one thinks of without dis- 
 may. It only seems that axe and bush hook 
 could make little impression. "Railroaders" 
 take dynamite to any ironwood trees in their 
 path. A good conservationist at home, I 
 caught myself drawing an eager breath on 
 seeing a little forest fire, then settling back 
 in quick disappointment at the certainty that 
 the fire could not spread much. Every clear- 
 ing around a native hut becomes as welcome 
 as an oasis in a desert, and when you finally 
 emerge at Juile into broad fields where cattle 
 graze in numbers, they are as beautiful as 
 asphodel meadows to a returned traveler 
 from the Shades. 
 
 It will be night again when Coatzacoalcos, 
 or Puerto Mexico by its new name, is 
 reached. Another night in another hotel 
 conducted by an American and owned by 
 
 85 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 "the Pearsons," another day in surveying a 
 harbor and its equipment, less remarkable 
 here than at Salina Cruz because the mouth 
 of the Coatzacoalcos River offered some nat- 
 ural advantage, another impression of a town 
 that is neither Mexican nor American nor 
 English nor a composite of its discoverable 
 elements, and in which women seem to be as 
 scarce as in Tehuantepec they are super- 
 numerary, and you have completed your Isth- 
 mian observation, you think. 
 
 One hundred and fifty miles farther down 
 the Isthmus toward Yucatan and Central 
 America, at Frontera, still another artificial 
 harbor is projected, this time by dredging a 
 canal from the Grijalva River near its mouth 
 to a quiet bay a mile distant. But we shall 
 not visit Frontera. 
 
 Cortez foresaw that across this narrow sep- 
 aration between the two oceans, where the 
 mountain range breaks down low, would pass 
 a great highway for the world's trade. He 
 so wrote of it. Humboldt called it "the 
 bridge of the world's commerce." As early 
 as 1774 a Spanish engineer declared his be- 
 lief in the feasibility of the canal idea. About 
 the middle of the nineteenth century, those 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 opportunists, the '49 - ers, on their way to 
 California gold fields, without waiting for 
 canal or railroad, went across by scores, the 
 Spaniards having long before built a coach 
 road from one ocean to the other. An old 
 stage driver who took many of the miners 
 over was still living, I was told, in 1905. The 
 American gold coins in the necklace of a 
 Tehuana belle, if they do not date back to 
 the '50's, may represent a preference that 
 grew up then. Axi American engineer named 
 Eads once had a concession from the Mexi- 
 can government to construct a "ship rail- 
 way," whatever that may have meant, but 
 could not raise capital for it. It was a Brit- 
 ish firm, S. Pearson and Son, builders of the 
 harbors at Vera Cruz, Salina Cruz, Coatza- 
 coalcos, and elsewhere, who finally constructed 
 the railroad, the government at first paying a 
 fixed sum for each unit of work but after- 
 ward entering into a joint partnership with 
 the Pearsons, which is to hold till 1953. Sir 
 Weetman Pearson, president of the company, 
 is now planning to build a railroad from Mex- 
 ico City to Puebla, reaching snow line on 
 Popocatepetl at 14,000 feet and with a branch 
 to the peak about 4000 feet higher. It will 
 
 §7 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 enable one to go from Mexico City to the 
 peak of "Popo" in two hours, leaving balmy 
 air and a temperature generally of 75 to 80 
 degrees and reaching one often as low as 20 
 degrees below zero. Americans are not the 
 only bold projectors. Americans, however, 
 have not ceased to be prominent in the Te- 
 huantepec region. There are abandoned plan- 
 tatiops and abandoned home sites well dis- 
 tributed along both the Isthmian railroad 
 proper and the Vera Cruji al Istmo route, 
 which represent the utterly foolish investment 
 of American money, generally brought about 
 by ignorant and unscrupulous American pro- 
 motion. I could learn, for example, of only 
 one rubber plantation in which stock has been 
 offered for sale that has a prospect of even 
 moderate returns ; and my informants ascribed 
 this exception more to luck than to com- 
 petence of the prime movers, who were inex- 
 perienced. Many plantations and private 
 "home sites" not yet abandoned ought to be 
 and will be. Every one at Santa Lucrecia 
 treated the matter either as a huge joke or as 
 a great pity. Missionaries in Mexico City 
 afterward told me of helping families to pay 
 their way back home, and urged that some 
 
 88 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 general warning be given. The objection to 
 any general warning is that there are possibil- 
 ities in the region for the right type of settler 
 acting under the right advice. The American 
 Consul-General, when appealed to, said in 
 effect that he had often had these matters 
 brought to his attention, but any consular 
 officer is powerless to help, as the State De- 
 partment does not authorize our representa- 
 tives to offer opinions regarding particular 
 business undertakings. From a source of the 
 highest competence I obtained this advice: 
 "Refer people through their banks to Dun's 
 and Bradstreet's, but let them say that they 
 are interested only incidentally in the financial 
 rating of the agents or promoters in the 
 United States. What they need is a thorough 
 special report on the conditions of the planta- 
 tion or other enterprise itself." One of the 
 most absurd things is the way in which inex- 
 perienced persons make a tour under the con- 
 duct of some agent, as a party were doing in 
 our train, and flatter themselves that they 
 have investigated. They take for rubber 
 plants a kind of glassy-leaved tree that is as 
 worthless as mullein stalks. They miscalcu- 
 late the healthfulness of climate, the number 
 
 89 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of years necessary to raise a crop, the cost 
 and availability of labor, the time involved in 
 transporting perishable fruits — any one of a 
 dozen factors that are vital. 
 
 Making any of these blunders, a man is 
 likely to profit little by the general fact that 
 Mexico as a whole yields annually two hun- 
 dred million dollars' worth of farm products 
 and that scarcely a hundredth part of her 
 arable land is yet under cultivation. Some 
 day vast regions in northern Mexico will be 
 irrigated and reclaimed as California, Colo- 
 rado, Texas, and Nevada so largely have 
 been; but during the process many a too in- 
 cautious person may lose all he has. The 
 right Americans to invest in Mexican enter- 
 prises are either those who are prepared for 
 wild speculative chances or those who know 
 what they are about. 
 
 Your Isthmian impressions are after all 
 not quite finished, for as you climb the grad- 
 ual slope in the evening train, lights will glim- 
 mer with lowly human kindness from behind 
 screens that in daytime your vision did not 
 penetrate, and will mean something domestic, 
 something that is comfortable to think about. 
 After all; men do live here where only reptiles 
 
 90 
 
TEHUANTEPEC AND THE JUNGLE 
 
 might be thought to have a place, and some- 
 how they shape life to its environment. The 
 environment will yield also to them, and who 
 knows of what they may be the forerunners? 
 You can grapple with the thought of the 
 jungle better now in the soothing dark, and 
 to-morrow you will not regard it with your 
 first abhorrence. You will again see it preg- 
 nant with great values for time to come. 
 
 91 
 
VII 
 
 OAXACA 
 
 STILL back over your course as far as 
 Santa Lucrecia, then north, that is par- 
 allel to the coast, which is to say west, 
 two hundred miles to CordoA'^a, and again you 
 touch the route that you might have taken at 
 once from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. But 
 still you are not ready to follow it. You are 
 bound for the city of Oaxaca, the capital of 
 the state in which you have been for several 
 days, and then to Mitla, the place of ruins. 
 At one time you were within seventy-five 
 miles if you could have struck across country; 
 but the trail would have led through formid- 
 able mountains, where the Indians are of un- 
 certain temper toward strangers, and you 
 could have saved nothing in time, nor in 
 money after guide and mules were paid for. 
 So you make this circuit of more than four 
 hundred miles over three railroads, through 
 two states besides the one that you have left 
 and into which you will return. 
 
OAXACA 
 
 A night in Tehuacan, whose bottled water 
 has made you familiar with the name in ad- 
 vance, will give you a taste of perfect climate 
 and a view of Mexicans at a health resort. 
 The hotel has decorations that would cost 
 more in New York than the whole establish- 
 ment is worth. You walk out into the coun- 
 try about sundown and see women washing 
 clothes but find no evidence that their own, or 
 they themselves, were ever washed. The swift 
 streams rush along with water enough to 
 cleanse a multitude, through the clean, hard 
 banks that they have lined with their calcium 
 deposit; but people and houses look as if the 
 water had brought none of its ministries to 
 them. Is this merely one of the unaccountable 
 variations of custom, or partly explained by 
 the disheartening amount of dust that flies 
 about, so that cleanness would be but a mo- 
 mentary state at best? I remember speculat- 
 ing about this at El Riego, a mile or so out; 
 I remember as I returned seeing two soldiers, 
 one reading to the other, under a palmetto 
 tree; I remember the mountains at sunset; 
 and I remember the heavy, fragrant white 
 flower that dropped on the pavement under my 
 window at night with a sound like that of a 
 
 93 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 banana peel. So much I remember of Tehua- 
 can. 
 
 Oaxaca has 40,000 inhabitants, which is to 
 say that it is as large as the old Massachusetts 
 town of Salem. It is older by a hundred and 
 forty years — older thaii St. Augustine by 
 more than jhree-quarters of a century. It 
 has been the scene of many battles, from when 
 the Mixtec and Zapotec Indians made stand 
 after stand against Cortez, the future Mar- 
 quis of Oaxaca, to the times of Hidalgo, 
 Juarez, and their successors. Such opposi- 
 tion did the Spaniards encounter here on their 
 first visit that they withdrew till a year later, 
 in 1522, when Montezuma had fallen and his 
 capital, Tenochtitlan, was in their hands. 
 Then they subdued the place by the aid of 
 great numbers of native allies. The inhab- 
 itants of the region were largely an agricul- 
 tural people, though the city itself had grown 
 important because of the presence of gold in 
 rich deposits. It was on account of the gald 
 that Cortez chose this as the seat of his do- 
 main and had himself created Marc(uis of 
 Oaxaca by the Spanish crown. As for the 
 gold, the conquistadores were not wholly dis- 
 appointed, though their dreams were beyond 
 
 94 
 
OAXACA 
 
 realization. As to the people, while the city 
 has always remained a stronghold of Roman- 
 ism and often of political reaction, it has also 
 been a center of political agitation whenever 
 any new impulse was astir anywhere in the 
 country. Even to-day there are Indians com- 
 ing in to sell their wares at the Oaxaca mar- 
 ket who have never acknowledged the author- 
 ity of a foreign ruler, 
 
 T}ie_cochineal4ndustry originated here and 
 spread hence to Central America, then to the 
 Canary Islands and elsewhere. The Indians 
 of Oaxaca had used the brilliant and perma- 
 nent scarlet dye to color their sarapes, prob- 
 ably for centuries, without discovering that 
 they were indebted to a minute insect which 
 feeds on certain species of cactus. They 
 thought that they were baking or boiling a 
 natural product of the plant itself. How- 
 ever, they were perfectly familiar with its 
 virtues, as they were with those of many of 
 the native dye woods. Here are still to be 
 bought the best Indian blankets in the repub- 
 lic, of either wool or cotton, dyed with vege- 
 table colors, though one needs to guard 
 against aniline and other delusions. The 
 Oaxaca market, be it here said, is as charac- 
 
 95 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 teristic as any in Mexico; and as becomes the 
 market in one of the best Roman Catholic 
 towns of a Spanish country, it is at its live- 
 liest on Sunday. 
 
 Oaxaca nestles, as do many cities of the 
 Mexican plateau, among mountains that give 
 a noble frame and background to every pic- 
 ture. There is no vista without a church 
 dome; and churches and houses alike have an 
 appearance not only of age but of permanence 
 that is satisfying. The houses are all made of 
 the heaviest construction to survive earth- 
 quakes. I saw one of adobe that has been 
 standing since 1660. Solidity is the keynote, 
 in aqueducts, houses, churches, everj'^where. 
 The ancient-looking ox carts with their pon- 
 derous wooden wheels, and the rough cobbled 
 pavements over which they move so lazily all 
 express it. The native men and women are 
 types of it. One has difficulty to conceive that 
 anything at Oaxaca ever changed. The cli- 
 mate never does — it is almost perfectly equa- 
 ble, and thoroughly delightful. 
 
 There is an amazingly rich old church, 
 Santo Domingo, once larger with its_acces- 
 gorjLhuiMings than St. Peter's at Rome, where 
 young_ Pprfirio Diaz dangled dowfn upon a 
 
 96 
 
OAX^CA 
 
 rope to the window of his former teacher's 
 _^ grison cell — one of many exploits in the career 
 of this daring and resourceful man. He, like 
 Juarez, was a native of the city. 
 
 As striking as any architectural feature are 
 the massive and extensive portales, which face 
 the Zocalo and, with the cathedral, give satis- 
 fying dignity to it. They harbor, within doors 
 and without, the busiest mercantile activities 
 of the city, and make part of a picture which 
 could not seem much more remote than it does 
 from any twentieth-century part of the world. 
 Having left my hat in one of the shops to be 
 cleaned after a dusty ride, I ventured bare- 
 headed among the venders, public letter- 
 writers, idlers, and passers-by, in search of a 
 boot-black. When I found him, his first im- 
 pudent, astonishing words were: "Where's 
 your hat. Mister? You'd better look out or 
 they'll arrest you and send you into the 
 army." I told him they'd have to send me 
 into the American army, and asked where he 
 had learned my language so well. It de- 
 veloped that he had beaten his way to New 
 York a year or two before and had spent sev- 
 eral months there in the "shine" business. He 
 was about fifteen years old. 
 
 97 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 The cathedral stands Avhere the Zocalo and 
 the Alameda, both rectangles, touch at a cor- 
 ner, so that it has beautifully shaded park both 
 in front and on one side and is itself the cen- 
 tral figure of the whole scheme. It has at 
 least one delightful aspect, that of the facade 
 from the plaza opposite. Particularly in the 
 evening, this view is one of melting loveliness. 
 The soft creamy or greenish hues of a native 
 stone, the somewhat decayed surfaces, the 
 angles softened by wear, are all more beauti- 
 ful than they can have been when the builders 
 left them, though the front must always have 
 been one of singular beauty. Within are two 
 or three noted paintings by native artists ; but 
 often I have not found Mexican churches 
 favorable places for looking at pictures, and 
 this cathedral with its warm tones and gentle 
 outlines is a sweeter picture than any that it 
 houses. 
 
 On one of the high, surrounding hills, what 
 appear from the hotel windows to be several 
 natural mounds are in fact part of the ruins 
 of Monte Alban, to be reached by three hours' 
 horseback ride and worthy of a visit by any 
 one of antiquarian interests. They may be 
 older than the ruins of Yucatan and are cer- 
 
 98 
 
OAXACA 
 
 tainly much older than those of Mitla, which 
 nearly every visitor to the region sees. They 
 are also more accessible. 
 
 An excursion thatis recommended, though 
 I never went so far, is one eastward beyond 
 Mitla to the summit of Zempoaltepec, about 
 12,000 feet high. The panorama of moun- 
 tains, forests, tropic lands, and opposite 
 oceans — the Gulf of Mexico on the east and 
 the Pacific on the west — is said not to be 
 equaled from many points in the world. 
 While lamenting that we cannot go out for 
 the ascent, we may stretch our thoughts to it 
 from having been so breathlessly near going. 
 Another time, perhaps ! 
 
 99 
 
VIII 
 
 TO MITLA AND BACK 
 
 MITLA, about twenty-five miles from 
 Oaxaca, is the most famous i place of 
 <^'),-~ riiim_in_all_Mexico. Soon it will be 
 reached by railroad; but I am glad that for 
 me it was still necessary to take a coach. 
 Three horses were driven abreast and a change 
 was made at Tlacolula. There I saw the cere- 
 mony of hand-kissing performed with as much 
 gravity between friends on the street as 
 though each withered and ragged crone were 
 a duchess. It was always the older person 
 that was thus reverenced by the younger. At 
 Tlacolula, too, I entered an old church where 
 the guide-book said nothing was of interest, 
 and did, it is true, find the interior being done 
 over in lurid vulgarity and furnished with 
 images, the hideous crudity of which seems 
 blasphemous to a heretic eye; but I found also 
 some old pictures, the canvas breaking 
 through but the colors as rich as when the 
 brush left them, and the whole effulgent still 
 
 100 
 
TO MITLA AND BACK 
 
 with the light that never was on sea or land. 
 It is not worth while to ask the name of the 
 artist, he was a native and a copyist — all art- 
 ists are copyists — and there have been many 
 like him in Mexico; but he belonged to the 
 school of those who mix more than "brains" 
 with their colors — ^who mix in tears and 
 ecstasy, who, seeing the invisible, have the art 
 to make some hint of it appear. 
 
 At another little village, sooner reached 
 than Tlacolula, in fact, is one of the largest 
 and oldest trees on earth. A new lettuce is 
 no fresher than the big cypress tree of Tule, 
 with its girth of 160 feet, and its height, rela- 
 tively small, of 160 to 175 feet. Cortez rested 
 under it and so wondered at its vastness that 
 he made record of it. Humboldt, as late as 
 the middle of the nineteenth century, carved a 
 legend to distinguish it, and it has grown 
 calmly on till this decoration is nearly em- 
 bedded. There are other great trees of the 
 same species near; but none approaches this 
 in size. 
 
 Every lane in Tule is hedged in with the 
 organ cactus which stands like elongated 
 prickly cucumbers on end, giving a strange 
 aspect to the irregular streets. The houses 
 
 101 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 are thatched and surrounded by fruit trees 
 and flowering plants. The inhabitants, long 
 accustomed to watch the stranger go by, have 
 never adopted his ways. A woman clothed 
 only from her waist down disappeared on our 
 approach, but not in confusion. Children did 
 not disappear at all, but stood unashamed, 
 asking for centavos. Men working over their 
 sandals or their wooden plows hardly lifted a 
 glance. From within the bamboo huts came 
 the spatting sound with which Indian wives 
 have always beaten their corn paste between 
 their hands into thin cakes for cooking. While 
 tortillas are now made in the larger towns by 
 machinery, yet this immemorial patter an- 
 nounces dinner time to-day in every Mexican 
 village. 
 
 The road from Oaxaca to Mitla is wide 
 enough for four coaches to drive abreast. It 
 might remind one of Charles Lamb's remark 
 about a certain man's taste — so much of it 
 and all so bad ! Along it go in procession the 
 centuries from Homer's day to that of Sancho 
 Panza, but never anything of later style, ex- 
 cept the occasional tourist from foreign lands 
 who recognizes in himself a thing forced, un- 
 natural, grotesque. He passes like a comet 
 
 103 
 
TO MITLA AND BACK 
 
 through serene skies, save that he must pass in 
 a borrowed vehicle; and serenity will return 
 when he is gone. The crooked stick that 
 served for a plow in Egypt and India will 
 move along in its furrow, the oxen trudging 
 before it; the carts will creak along the high- 
 way; the donkeys with skin bottles puffing on 
 either side will patter on; and the blue sky 
 will arch over them all, unruffled. 
 
 An hacienda with its old house covering an 
 acre, the walls four feet thick, is the refuge 
 and headquarters of tired and dusty aliens in 
 Mitla. The world is all within the court you 
 enter. Grated windows, doors three inches 
 through, locks that some blacksmith made in 
 1690 or thereabouts — everything in the place 
 has been quieted by the caress of age. But 
 travel out through the rather squalid village 
 to the monuments you have come to see, and 
 again you are reminded that age is relative. 
 Not so old as Uxmal with its strange animal 
 figures, not so old as Monte Alban with its 
 picture writing, capable now of being repaired 
 for centuries of their original use if any one 
 knew and cared to perpetuate it, yet old 
 enough to be stripped of history and free from 
 ascriptions of origin, these ruins are a contra- 
 
 103 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 diction and an astonishment. They are not 
 moss-grown, for moss does not grow here. 
 Trees and shrubs have not veiled and claimed 
 them again to an identity with nature, for 
 only the cactus is at home on these plains and 
 slopes. Storm and earthquake have won no 
 compromise of their erectness and rectilinear 
 power, for they were built to defy storm and 
 earthquake. Even the character of their 
 decoration is such as to set them farthest from 
 any hint of natural objects — ^not only is it 
 geometric as distinguished from the repre- 
 sentation of plants and animal forms, but its 
 designs are worked out in straight lines. If 
 ever architecture spoke, these massive halls 
 upon the high ground of Mitla speak for 
 their builders, "Behold we were men, and this 
 work was our work, not a thing of chance or 
 growth; and this our work was greatly done, 
 done after a fashion of our devising, done to 
 remain." It is estimated that a million tiles, 
 or more properly flat stones, went into the 
 walls of Mitla thus far uncovered. They con- 
 stitute a mosaic that differs from the ordinary 
 because the stones are set on edge, and by 
 their inequalities of width, projecting one be- 
 yond another, form the design in relief. Door- 
 
 104 
 
TO MITLA AND BACK 
 
 ways are not arched — a curved arch, even if 
 they knew it, would ill have fitted the style of 
 these builders; but great stones from fifteen 
 to eighteen feet long, five feet wide, and four 
 feet thick were placed as lintels and then the 
 same deep intricate design was unflinchingly 
 carved upon them. The walls were so well 
 laid, for the most part without mortar, that 
 each stone is perfectly firm in its original 
 place and only curious examination discovers, 
 even to-day, where carving leaves off and 
 mosaic begins. 
 
 There are several great halls, one called the 
 hall of monoliths, where are six columns of 
 porphyry, fourteen feet high and about seven 
 in circumference, having neither capital nor 
 pedestal but tapered and rounded toward the 
 top in a way that shows artistic thought, and 
 is as much a departure from straightness as 
 this peculiar style would warrant. 
 
 A little of the colored decoration that re- 
 mains where pious Roman priests formerly 
 stabled their horses, shows, strangely enough, 
 grotesque heads. The heads give to some 
 the impression of being grotesque not because 
 of incapacity to make them otherwise but 
 from conscious design. 
 
 105 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 The ruins of Mitla are large enough to be 
 those of a city, yet are not those of a city. 
 They may have been related to one as the old 
 castle to its village, or they may have been 
 only temples or tombs. Whatever the pur- 
 pose for which they were built, the men who 
 built them in their geometric perfection must 
 have done much else that would be worthy of 
 attention if known. To have looked at their 
 handiwork is to have faced the riddle of the 
 ages. 
 
 Leave Mitla, imagine your way retraced to 
 where you left the axis between Vera Cruz 
 and Mexico, and proceed at last toward the 
 capital. Orizaba is the first considerable 
 town, girt around with high mountains, well 
 wooded. A coffee center and the capital of 
 the cotton-weaving industry in Mexico, it is 
 best remembered merely as a beautiful hill 
 town, the first up from Vera Cruz in which 
 fever is practically unknown, the natural first 
 station on the journey upward. Here the 
 European allies in 1862 by consent of Juarez 
 made their first headquarters. 
 
 Up from Orizaba, with its altitude of 4000 
 feet, round the famous Maltrata curve, still 
 winding steeply up, never down, at every vil- 
 
 106 
 
TO MITLA AND BACK 
 
 lage buying fruit and baskets of intoxica- 
 tingly fragrant gardenias from women and 
 girls as dark and comely as Ruth or Rebecca, 
 and at a distance of 173 kilometers (110 
 miles) from Vera Cruz we shall find ourselves 
 on the level of the great plateau. As we 
 turn again and again up the incline, villages 
 and farms spread like little gardens far below 
 us ; and all has a look quite different from that 
 in the jungle, of having been long subdued 
 to human use. Every path has been beaten 
 for centuries by the sandaled or naked feet 
 of men and women not belonging to our race, 
 but seeming far nearer kin to us now as we 
 look thus upon their homes and haunts than 
 we had ever before felt them. We find our- 
 selves in a critical state of mind, not toward 
 the primitive life that has been lived here, 
 but toward our own. It seems a pity that, 
 while learning a few things of undoubted ad- 
 vantage, we should have learned so many 
 tending only to complication and unnatural- 
 ness. 
 
 As the elevation increases and the air grows 
 colder, the Mexican blanket is more and more 
 in evidence. The statuesque gives way to the 
 picturesque, and the beauty and grace of 
 
 107 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 nature little trammeled or adorned to the dig- 
 nity and the humor of umber figures bedecked 
 in high colors and draped with the pride of 
 grandees. 
 
 On across the plain, all afternoon, passing 
 the great prehistoric pyramids of the sun and 
 moon at San Juan Teotihuacan, which I have 
 seen many a time from car windows, and think 
 of as old friends though I never stopped to 
 visit them, and so at evening we shall arrive 
 at Mexico City, a little giddy from the alti- 
 tude, it may be, a little bewildered by kalei- 
 doscopic changes, but with a feeling of enrich- 
 ment from the experiences of the day. 
 
 108 
 
IX 
 
 MEXICO CITY 
 
 THE mingled sounds of hoofs upon as- 
 phalt, of street cars, of automobiles de- 
 manding the right of way, and of many 
 human feet and voices, the downward swoop 
 of an elevator, and then the smell of "coffee 
 and cut roses" triumphing over that of fresh 
 ink on your newspaper — all these that you 
 experience at the beginning of your first day 
 in Mexico City do not give any overwhelming 
 sense of being swung out into far places or of 
 being projected backward into the sixteenth 
 century. This Mexican Herald has tele- 
 graphic columns as long as those of the 
 "daily" at home and editorials written in Eng- 
 lish as familiar. 
 
 Though it may have been two or three 
 weeks since you landed in Vera Cruz, prob- 
 ably the tall American with the long nose or 
 some equally remembered fellow-passenger 
 will be sitting within reach of a nod; and 
 
 109 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 there will be also some of last night's "ar- 
 rivals" who will tell you, if you ask, that they 
 were just four days coming from Buffalo or 
 three from St. Louis, with Pullman and din- 
 ing car service all the way. This is rather start- 
 ling but is only a prophecy of what will soon 
 be accomplished as far as Guatemala and be- 
 yond. Already tolerable trains run from 
 Gamboa on the Tehuantepec line, southward 
 to the Guatemalan border. The Pan-Amer- 
 ican system which was the dream of James G. 
 Blaine will be in operation, possibly within 
 fifteen years, from New York to the great 
 ports of South America. 
 
 You are at an American hotel. If you were 
 a German or a Frenchman you would be at a 
 German or a French hotel and would find 
 things as little foreign to you as everything 
 here seems to American observation. You 
 would still be reading your newspaper in Eng- 
 lish, it is likely, but for Germans and French- 
 men in Mexico English ceases to be a strange 
 tongue. In short, you are in a cosmopolitan 
 city. The American population alone is esti- 
 mated at 7000. Then there are the English 
 and the English-speaking Germans and 
 French alluded to just now, and it would be 
 
 110 
 
MEXICO CITY 
 
 hard to say how many English-speaking 
 Mexicans. On the principal business streets 
 and in business hours English is heard more 
 than Spanish, and more than any other lan- 
 guage whatsoever, though man spricht 
 Deutsch and parte Franpais also with such 
 frequency as to denote that other than Amer- 
 ican enterprise is at work. 
 
 No city is the center of the United States 
 as Mexico City is that of the Mexican repub- 
 lic ; it is metropolis, political and financial cap- 
 ital, chief seat of learning, publishing center, 
 travel center, and heart of the nation in al- 
 most every organic way that can be thought 
 of. Every one who lives or even winters in 
 the repiiblic comes to "the City" from time 
 to time. Paradoxically enough, it- is one of 
 the least Mexican of all places in Mexico. It 
 is no place in which to make any detailed first- 
 hand study of character and conditions. One 
 may, however, do much generalizing here, and 
 profit much by the knowledge and observation 
 of others. 
 
 London and New York, cosmopolitan as 
 they are, have each their marks of nationality, 
 so that a traveler awaking in one would hard- 
 ly fancy himself in the other. There are so 
 
 111 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 many Germans, Frenchmen, and Americans 
 in London, all wearing clothes conformed 
 to a world pattern, and so many Ger- 
 mans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen in New 
 York, all similarly conformed, that an 
 off-hand analysis of the human stream on 
 a busy thoroughfare might give no clue; but 
 there are always signs at hand. The hack- 
 man in New York is a different figure from 
 the London "cabby," the policeman on Fifth 
 Avenue and the "bobby" on Pall Mall do not 
 look alike, the New York "sky-scraper" may 
 be suggested by individual buildings elsewhere 
 but is dominant in the view of no city out- 
 side of the United States. Similarly, in Mex- 
 ico City, everything official, or institutional, 
 or architectural, is Mexican on its face*. South 
 America, Spain, Palestine,' would show like- 
 nesses; but I am indicating that cosmopolitan 
 appearance and international resemblance dis- 
 solve under close examination. There are 
 taxicabs; but if a taxicab from Mexico City, 
 driver and all, could pass through New York, 
 it would be gazed at, even in that blase me- 
 tropolis, from Battery Park to Harlem. The 
 street cars are of a familiar enough model, 
 built in the United States. It is one of the 
 
 112 
 
MEXICO CITY 
 
 iirst facts learned that, if not under American 
 control, they are under English, and so 
 equally far from promising any Mexican as- 
 pect. But the motorman and the conductorwho 
 comes to take your seis centavos (three Amer- 
 ican cents) have quite other than Anglo- 
 Saxon earmarks. The "running stock" of 
 the road, for that matter, would reveal some 
 variations if watched long enough, for ex- 
 ample — one of the relatively swift things in 
 Mexico — an electric hearse, that is a flat car, 
 with a black canopy designed for funeral pur- 
 poses mounted upon it. Such a car will be 
 followed by passenger coaches as many as the 
 size of the funeral requires. But I had in- 
 tended no description here — only an entry in 
 our catalogue of things distinctive. Police- 
 men and letter carriers, and, in spite of their 
 German uniform, soldiers also, are as Latin- 
 American as careful selection could have made 
 them if such had been applied. The Amer- 
 ican stores as well as the shops with American 
 clerks, and those with polyglot French and 
 German managers or clerks, or with "Amer- 
 ican" speaking Mexican clerks, are non-com- 
 mittal enough in a casual view of their stock, 
 barring, of course, souvenir photographs and 
 
 113 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 curios ; but look up at almost any of the build- 
 ings in which they are housed and you will 
 know that you are not in the neighborhood of 
 John Wanamaker's or Marshall Field's em- 
 porium. 
 
 Even between the crowds in one national 
 metropolis and in another the likeness is al- 
 ways superficial and confined to certain quar- 
 ters. Intermingled with "citizens of the 
 world" who almost constitute an international 
 type of themselves, and with foreign people 
 of business, there are always the clearly in- 
 digenous, those who in the nature of things 
 would not be where they do not belong. One 
 knows them instantly to be the rightful in- 
 habitants; and nowhere are they more 
 strongly marked than in Mexico, with the 
 sandals, the cotton suit of two garments for 
 man or woman, the gaudy blanket, the wide 
 hat or the rebozo. They appear as free from 
 self-consciousness and go as calmly about 
 their affairs in Mexico City as in Tehuacan. 
 I once saw two imperturbable Aztecs in native 
 costume drive a flock of a hundred or more 
 turkeys along San Francisco, the most 
 bustling street of the capital, using a strip of 
 cloth on the end of a stick to direct their 
 
 114 
 
MEXICO CITY 
 
 feathered charges, and apparently unconscious 
 of the varied world around them. One tur- 
 key was holding up an injured and bleeding 
 foot that had been run over by some car or 
 cart, but otherwise things appeared to be mov- 
 ing admirably. 
 
 Among the well-to-do one can find the 
 native types by noticing who go in and out at 
 old houses of settled character, apart from the 
 business district. A frame building is almost 
 unknown, by reason of which the fire loss is 
 practically nothing, though companies of 
 "pumpers," that is firemen, are prudently 
 maintained. The prevailing style of house in 
 Mexico City, as elsewhere in the republic, is 
 the hollow square, built of stone or of either 
 brick or adobe stiiccoed over, with a tunnel 
 through yiejawer-jstory from the street to the 
 inner hollow. In other words, it is the Span- 
 ish plan. Oriental before it was Spanish, of a 
 flat, tile-roofed house of two or three stories 
 built around an open court or patio, fronting 
 directly on the street and with no outside 
 ornament except the window balconies, the 
 heavy gratings, and sometimes elaborate carv- 
 ing or other adornment on the wooden doors. 
 The outside walls, if stuccoed, may be tinted 
 
 115 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 variously ; and if the occupants have bad taste 
 the effect may be almost as dreadful as they 
 would achieve upon a clapboard mansion in 
 Illinois. There is no lawn, either in front, 
 where space would permit none, or in the 
 court, which as often as not is paved 
 throughout. This court, however, is usually 
 made beautiful by a profusion of plants and 
 flowers, occasionally by statuary and foun- 
 tains. There are not only the ponderous 
 doors at the entrance from the street, but 
 grilles at the farther end of what for conven- 
 ience we have called the tunnel; and the 
 glimpse of the patio that one gets, pleasing as 
 a rule even without their enchantment, ac- 
 quires from these iron gratings an added 
 charm of half concealment such as a lady's 
 face may borrow from a veil. The entrance is 
 wide enough to admit a coach and pair, with 
 purpose, too, for the family coach does actu- 
 ally enter. The "carriage house," as we 
 should say, and the stables as well, are com- 
 monly parts of the house itself. They occupy 
 a corner of the lower story, toward the back, 
 the servants' quarters occupying the front 
 part of this same story. It is true, in a very 
 large house, stables may be built on a sec- 
 
 ai6 
 
MEXICO CITY 
 
 ond court behind that of the house itself, 
 reached by a second "tunnel" at the back. 
 The portero, or doorkeeper, is an important 
 functionary who, with his family, occupies a 
 room, not necessarily blessed with any furni- 
 ture, near the door, answers every summons 
 on the knocker or bell by day, locks the 
 doors about ten o'clock at night, and ex- 
 pects a fee if called from his straw mat 
 after hours to admit any belated resident 
 or visitor. The family live on the sec- 
 ond story, where a "corridor" or balcony 
 runs completely around, reached by a stair- 
 way from the lower court. Here, again, there 
 are flowers and foliage plants in pots and 
 boxes. This upper veranda is a pleasant 
 place, usually affording a sunny side if one is 
 chilly or a shady side if the weather seems too 
 warm. 
 
 So much we may learn without intrusion or 
 undue asking of questions if no introduction 
 actually admits us to a house. The people 
 who go in and out of these spacious dwellings, 
 each of them making as separate an atmos- 
 phere for itself as a cloistered monastery, are 
 the leisurely, graceful, and dark-skinned dons 
 and ladies that we should expect. 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 When we left hotels, restaurants, and shops 
 behind, we left most of our American and 
 other foreign friends. The foreigners, to be 
 sure, do not all live in hotels. There is a 
 highly uninteresting colony where various at- 
 tempts have been made to transplant Amer- 
 ican styles of houses or to compromise be- 
 tween these and the established type. Then 
 there are hundreds of families that either own 
 or hire houses of the Mexican plan, or live in 
 viviendas (apartments) as they find them. If 
 we stroll by accident into any quarter that has 
 been thus invaded, however, we shall soon 
 recognize it, and can betake ourselves else- 
 where for observation. 
 
 X18 
 
X 
 
 SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 FOR much that we desire we may make 
 the parks our stalking ground. The Zo- 
 calo, as it is called, is the real center of 
 Mexic5„City, so far as grouping of interests 
 is concerned. One. writer has said that in no 
 American city are the parks used in any such 
 way as in Mexico. Washington is the near- 
 est approach to it. A park is a lounging place 
 for the idle hours, a promenade for the exhibi- 
 tion hours, and a forum for the most interest- 
 ing talkative hours of genteel people, to say 
 nothing of laborers and others with no dignity 
 to maintain. The Zocalo is all this. Then, 
 too, around it or within a few minutes' walk 
 are the Cathedral, the Flower Market, the 
 National Palace, the City Hall, the Museum, 
 the National Academy of Arts (San Carlos), 
 the NationalPawn Shop, the Thieves' Mar- 
 ket, and other objects of admiration or curi- 
 osity. All these might be seen between sun- 
 
 119 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 rise and sunset if there were not a somewhat 
 troublesome schedule of open and closed days 
 for some of them; and yet at almost any of 
 them a week could easily be spent. 
 
 Before beginning our career we shall have 
 learned the whereabouts of the Alameda, a 
 more fashionable park, beyond which the axis 
 of interest, so to speak, having run northwest 
 from the Zocalo, bends to the southwest and 
 runs on to a third park more famous than 
 either, two and a half or three miles distant, at 
 Chapultepec. 
 
 Time would fail us to do much more than 
 check off as "seen and noted" the really in- 
 teresting institutions already on our list. The 
 Cathedral is the foremost church edifice in 
 Mexico, perhaps in North America, cruci- 
 form in plan, with two towers that are both 
 beautiful and unique, having domes shaped 
 like the bells that they support. It occupies 
 the site of the principal Aztec pyramid of the 
 city and is built, historians say, on founda- 
 tions made largely of Aztec carvings, which 
 have been found and are still found in great 
 numbers whenever excavations are made in 
 the vicinity. The Cathedral is a massive 
 structure of basalt and gray sandstone in the 
 
 120 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 Spanish Renaissance styled over 390 feet long 
 by 180 broad, is known to have cost over two 
 millions of dollars, and was ninety-four years 
 in building. The decorations and treasures of 
 the church, previous to the confiscation by 
 Juarez's government, were almost fabulous, 
 and even now it is rich in old wood carvings, 
 paintings, and other such accessories as could 
 not readily be converted into public funds. 
 One painting is an undoubted Murillo, two or 
 three others may be of the same or equally 
 high origin, and a number by native pointers 
 are good. Mexican onyx in lavish quantities 
 enriches the interior, but not to excess, for 
 Mexican onyx is of soft rather than dazzling 
 beauty, in appearance about equally resem- 
 bling wax and marble. There are, as always 
 in these churches, many accessory and tem- 
 porary things which are gaudy, hideous, and 
 altogether out of character, but the general 
 effect is powerful enough to overcome their 
 presence. Critics who compare it with the 
 great churches of Europe regard the Cathe- 
 dral as a beautiful and impressive structure, 
 characterized on the whole by harmony and 
 restraint. 
 The middle-class women and such of the 
 
 121 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 M'calthy as frequent the place, with their re- 
 bozos or mantillas and black garments, are in 
 keeping with the architecture, the aged and 
 darkened carvings, the pictures, the gigantic 
 vellum-bound books, the soft light of the 
 candles, and the murmur of the chants. In- 
 dians from the rural districts in their bright 
 native garb come and laieel to kiss in apparent 
 rapture whatever presents itself as most 
 sacred. Their understanding of the differ- 
 ence between the religion of their early ances- 
 tors and that which they profess is merely 
 that a more glorious temple and a superior set 
 of divinities, more realistically portrayed, have 
 somehow displaced the old ones. "No mat- 
 ter," says the broad-minded and indifferent- 
 minded dispenser of off-hand reflections, "for 
 a half-hour they have been happy. Idolatry 
 and superstition appear to be very comfort- 
 ing, exalting things." Indeed! Opium also 
 is a comforting and exalting thing, at times 
 and in certain effects; but to avail oneself 
 of its nepenthe has not seemed favor- 
 able to personal progress or to bearing 
 one's part in the common march forward. 
 And how can we prove that progress is 
 desirable? We do not try. Samuel John- 
 
 122 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 son was once asked, since the cultivated arc 
 not all happy and the ignorant not all miser- 
 able, how he would argue that knowledge and 
 Culture are desirable. He answered, in sub- 
 stance, that there is no person who has them 
 and could be induced to part with them, and 
 no person lacldng them unless a fool, who fails 
 to desire them. Progress commends itself 
 directly to the sincere intelligence, and to any 
 other it need not ask to be commended. For 
 the definition and the proof of progress we 
 have no time here. I have seen such peones 
 as these emerging from ignorance and super- 
 stition to a sense of their own misery — not a 
 very agreeable change, you say — but to a 
 larger hope for their children, and to a sus- 
 taining belief in the dignity of their own 
 souls which would neither unqualifiedly admit 
 any reprobate or even decent fellow-mortal 
 as vicar, nor longer think it right for any gov- 
 ernor to hold them as beasts. I have seen them 
 exemplify all the simple virtues that smart 
 writers deny them, work and sacrifice for 
 their new faith, and approach old age and 
 death with a less fitful happiness than they 
 could draw from myths and fables. 
 I speak not as the highly regenerate, not in 
 1^3 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 deference to so-called missionaries who find 
 easy places in the balmy tropics and draw 
 more money than they could command at 
 home, not in apology for missionary secre- 
 taries who think the indolent, the languid, or 
 the ill-prepared are fit enough to send out. 
 But self-sacrificing, high-minded, gifted, and 
 wise men and women have built their strength 
 and their virtue into the Protestantism of 
 Mexico with its hundred thouoand adherents,* 
 and its educated, heroic native pastors living 
 on $25 to $40 a month; and any intelligent 
 northern man of the white race who has lived 
 in Mexico and permits them all to be called to 
 naught is unfair. I have known Unitarians to 
 contribute up to the full measure of their abil- 
 ity to Presbyterian work in Mexico because its 
 value was manifest without analysis of doc- 
 trines. I have known American Roman 
 Catholics to contribute for the work of a 
 Methodist missionary because he was doing 
 good. They did not consider that they were 
 helping to proselyte anybody from Catholi- 
 cism as they recognize it. Whether they would 
 have been sanctioned by the Vatican I doubt; 
 but they made a natural human response to 
 things as they found them. 
 
 1?A 
 *ljaxgely Mattered during the Revolution. 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 American, English, and French Catholics 
 visiting the country have repeatedly written 
 that Mexican faith, so far as the rank and file 
 of the people are concerned, is a dead faith. 
 The Aztec religion was highly ceremonial, 
 "The introduction of the Roman religion had 
 no other effect," according to Humboldt, 
 "than to substitute new ceremonies and 
 symbols for the rites of a sanguinary wor- 
 ship." Catholicism as exemplified by the 
 Spaniards was generally at its worst, and a," 
 propagated among the Indians it was empti- 
 ness unqualified. It has improved. I heard 
 a priest, not an American nor a Frenchman 
 but a young Spaniard from the Philippines, 
 after sending a sick man away, with his prof- 
 fered fee, to a physician, ask, "How can you 
 Protestants consign these poor cattle to either 
 Heaven or Hell? They have never been 
 taught anything. Surely they will need some 
 place of probation." Such honest and rational 
 treatment as his will help. The Protestant 
 influence will help; Catholicism has improved 
 most where Protestantism has been most 
 active. There are Mexican Catholic clergy- 
 men who admit this. A sermon or some dis- 
 course to the people in Spanish is now a very 
 
 125 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 common part of the service; formerly it was 
 unusual. Another consideration is that the 
 ' missionaries do not gather adherents solely or 
 chiefly frong^ attentive members of the Roman 
 church, but very largely from the neglected 
 and the unchurched. To suppose that all the 
 Mexican people are already Christianized ac- 
 cording to the tenets of Romanism is to make 
 a blind assumption. Protestant missions are 
 as legitimate and almost as sorelj'' needed in 
 Mexico as in India; and they entered only 
 after urgent entreaty. There is a kind of 
 reciprocity involved in whatever work may 
 really overlap that of the Roman church, for 
 when the establishment in Mexico was the 
 richest in the world considerable money was 
 sent to help weak and struggling Catholic 
 churches in the United States. 
 
 So much of reflection, as we visit and leave 
 the greatest religious edifice in Mexico, a city 
 of churches in a land of churches. There are 
 three hundred in the capital alone, some as 
 beautiful and more aristocratic, though not so 
 large nor so interesting as the Cathedral. The 
 most popular one of all is the church on 
 Guadalupe Hill, not in the city at all, prop- 
 erly speaking, but a little more than two miles 
 
 126 
 
SIGHT-SEEING A,T THE CAPITAL 
 
 out to the northeast, in a line parallel with the 
 shore of the gradually receding salt Lake 
 Texcoco. Here, in 1531, when some effective 
 sign was needed to turn the natives from their 
 old religion, a miraculous lady appeared to 
 Juan Diego, a poor villager. She was in fact 
 the Virgin Mary ; but the identity is not much 
 emphasized. There are tens of thousands to 
 whom the Lady of Guadalupe, or simply 
 "Guadalupe," means more than all the other 
 sacred beings in their category. Her like- 
 ness as she appeared in a luminous cloud was 
 kindly left with Juan along with some magical 
 roses on his mantle and is as familiar through- 
 out Mexico as the national coat of arms. Why 
 not, as she is the acknowledged patron saint? 
 The chapel which is her shrine cost a million 
 and a half dollars gold and contains precious 
 things and sacred relics of great additional val- 
 ue, including the miraculous picture. This is 
 the most frequented shrine in North America, 
 not excepting Ste. Anne de Beaupre near 
 Quebec. It is the source of marvelous cures 
 for which the ignorant in thousands, and the 
 less ignorant in scores, come hundreds of 
 miles. On December 12th, the special day set 
 apart in its honor, when the weary and wistful 
 
 127 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 devotees throng out by every means of con- 
 veyance, as well as on foot, different onlookers 
 may have different feelings but scarcely any 
 one can view the strange procession unmoved. 
 
 Let us return to the vicinity of the Zocalo. 
 The simple and impressionable Indian was 
 always a lover of flowers. He brought flowers 
 as well as vegetables through the canals that 
 led to this very spot — to the old city of Te- 
 nochtitlan on the shore of a lake now disap- 
 peared. He still knows how to tend them and 
 to mass them in seductive array. The Flower 
 Market of Mexico City in early morning is a 
 place to go and see roses, poppies, and other 
 flowers really abundant for once, and at 
 prices, despite the tourist "bulling" of the 
 market, that should make a New York florist 
 feel highly compassionate, or very much 
 ashamed. Sweet peas enough to fill a wash- 
 bowl, spicy and fresh, may be had for a 
 nickel. Nor do they become contemptible for 
 their cheapness or their abundance, here in 
 the hands of these romantic children of the 
 sun. 
 
 The, Thieves' Market is another place where 
 variety is inconceivable, where beauty and 
 precious values may be present though in am-- 
 
 128 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 bush, and where romance, albeit of a different 
 sort, may easily spin its web. Who wore these 
 jewels before some enterprising thief at much 
 risk claimed them for display here? Or what 
 enterprising rogue had them made for the ex- 
 press purpose of barter with the "Gringo"? 
 What hands lovingly caressed this old book, 
 yellowed with years, and what deft fingers em- 
 broidered this gossamerlike shawl of silk? 
 Were yonder little shoes taken ruthlessly from 
 baby feet or did their owner outgrow them or 
 perchance move to a country where none are 
 ever needed? What happy and confident 
 bride concealed her blushes and eager tears 
 behind this veil? To what treasuries did this 
 great hand-made and joyously elaborated key 
 once give entrance? This little old painting 
 with its wonderful amber varnish, cracked 
 but luminous, over the glory of color — who 
 painted his life into it? A place for fancies 
 is the Thieves' Market. One of the most 
 curious things that happens is nqt rare, 
 namely, that some one who loses an article of 
 value goes forthwith to the Mercado del Vo- 
 lador and makes it his own again for a tithe 
 of what it first cost him. 
 
 The P^wn Shop, or "Mount of Piety," here 
 129 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 as everywhere under the sun, is a varied mu- 
 seum illustrating the separableness of im- 
 provident man from his belongings and those 
 of his wife and children. But this pawn shop, 
 at least in intent, is a beneficent institution. 
 It is not managed in the interest of the pound 
 of flesh. A rich man, in 1775, seeing how the 
 common people were robbed by money lend- 
 ers, gave a fimd to endow a concern which 
 should loan upon a given article something 
 approaching its value, charge only a fair rate 
 of interest, and make redemption of it as easy 
 as possible. The national government recog- 
 nized what appeared to be the merit of such 
 a scheme and made an appropriation to ex- 
 tend it, not only in Mexico Citj'', but else- 
 where in the larger towns of the Republic. 
 The "good loan shark," by the way, has just 
 arrived in the United States, ushered in by 
 the Russell Sage Foundation, one hundred 
 and thirty odd years after it came into use in 
 Mexico. 
 
 At the Academy of San Carlos and also at 
 the National Museum are some of the worst 
 paintings that can be imagined, and they are 
 the first that a visitor is likely to see. Flesh 
 tints, always constituting one of the crucial 
 
 180 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 tests in portrait or figure painting, were a new 
 thing to be reckoned with when the sldn of 
 the Indian and' the mixed breed was to be 
 painted, and some of these dignitaries have 
 the complexion of an old whetstone or of a 
 white man who has survived a gunpowder ex- 
 plosion. When you have seen the best of the 
 work here, however, you will have seen a tri- 
 umph that for veracity may rank a little 
 higher or a little lower than the successful 
 treatment of the blonde or the near-blonde 
 that we call brunette, but which for intrinsic 
 beauty goes beyond comparison. It is not the 
 color of a chestnut, nor of glowing varnish 
 upon an old violin, it is not the color of gold 
 bronze, it has no exact representation in ivory, 
 nor in ancient vellum ; but if a composite of all 
 these could be made, one who has no technical 
 knowledge of color and who avoids consider- 
 ing too severely may imagine that the result 
 would be something like this. He loiows, if 
 he has seen Indians of the finer types, that 
 whatever the ingredients of this color they 
 have found them. The Mexican artists too 
 have found them, and have found the counter- 
 feit of life which makes their pictures speak 
 and move. 
 
 131 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 A great deal of the riches in art that once 
 abounded in Mexico was destroyed or taken 
 away during the French usurpation, and some 
 of it suffered during the civil wars. Yet there 
 are old masterpieces here to repay the pilgrim- 
 age of an art lover from New York. Murillo, 
 Zurbaran, Rubens, Titian, Guido Reni, Juan 
 de Carreno, are all represented. It is not 
 such importations, however, but the work of 
 the early and the modern Mexican schools that 
 will make the most striking impress on a visi- 
 tor whose thought is full of Mexico. If any 
 single picture ought to be specially mentioned 
 it is perhaps that by Parra of Father Las 
 Casas, the Pere Marquette of Mexico, pro- 
 tecting the Indians. It is of heroic size, splen- 
 didly conceived and feelingly executed, be- 
 longs to the modern school, and is Mexican in 
 subject, representing an incident in the con- 
 quest. As for the best piece, there is no best 
 one among such a collection. Noble in qual- 
 ity, both when religious scenes are depicted 
 and when original and distinctively Mexican 
 subjects are treated, most impressive in num- 
 ber and spread of canvas, superbly hung and 
 lighted, the pictures in the San Carlos gallery 
 exalt and transport the visitor of average re- 
 
 132 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 sponsiveness as few arrays of paintings in the 
 whole world, probably, will do. It is not the 
 awe of venerable old pictures but the glory, 
 the opulence, the vivid palpitating joy, loveli- 
 ness, grief, courage of«life which startles. It 
 is intimate, though in type or incident we 
 might describe it as romantic or strange. It 
 fits into what one has tried to actualize when 
 going up and down among the Mexicans. It 
 fuses the ideal, the romantic, with the real of 
 the sight-seeing of yesterday. Whether one 
 should desire to see these pictures by Echave, 
 Cabrera, Iberra, Obregon, Gutierrez, Ortega, 
 and Felix Parra as early as possible, so as to 
 carry their vision into one's observation, or 
 whether it is better to have seen first with 
 half-illumined eyes and matter-of-fact mind 
 would be difficult to decide. 
 
 The National Museum has its collection of 
 pictures, numerous and valuable, but of no 
 such account as those of the National Acad- 
 emy of San Carlos. It has ethnological and 
 geological and zoological exhibits ; but it is 
 for the Aztec and other antiquities of prehis- 
 toric Mexico that the museum will be most 
 remembered. The archaeological section can 
 be seen and a very strong impression got of 
 
 130 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 it in a half -hour. For it has specimen after 
 specimen of colossal-sized carving in porphyry 
 and trachyte rock, the character of which will 
 make itself felt at a glance. Is this the West- 
 ern world? Are we sure we are not in a mu- 
 seum of Bible lands, and of lands that Xeno- 
 phon and Cassar described? Here are near 
 cousins, surely, to the gods and demigods, 
 demons and grotesqueries, of Egypt, India, 
 Assyria. A wise scholar may tell us that this 
 great figure of Chac Mol is nothing like a 
 sphinx, that his head faces wrong, that his 
 body is not that of a lion but of a man, etc., 
 but we have seen a resemblance that will not 
 be explained away. The professor may tell 
 us that other figures do not resemble the squat 
 Buddha. The professor knows too much. 
 We see the resemblance. The professor has 
 almost become brother to the monoliths, and 
 he distinguishes them all according to their 
 individual marks. It needs some one not of 
 the family to take in resemblances at a flash. 
 Such an outsider loiows when he sees them, 
 usually. There are Ethiopian types here, as 
 unmistakable as a photograph of the stalwarts 
 who helped Roosevelt weigh his dead lioness in 
 Africa. There are faces that are Mongolian, 
 
 134 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 if we ever saw any such, and others that are 
 Semitic. We who are not learned are sure as 
 we stand here that the natives of pre-historic 
 Mexico had more than one connection with 
 the civilizations of the ancient East, if in fact 
 they did not originate them. Asked which of 
 the various theories as to origin we believe, we 
 shall probably declare, "All of them." Nor 
 shall we be without learned support in our 
 conviction. 
 
 A stone calendar weighing twenty-four tons 
 shows that the Aztec year had eighteen 
 months of twenty days each, like that of the 
 Egyptians, with an extra period of five days 
 to complete the astronomical round, and in its 
 proper tim.e a leap year. This, and another 
 huge cylinder believed to have been a sacri- 
 ficial stone, are both admirably carved and of 
 very hard material. 
 
 The National Palace, in part of which the 
 Museum is housed, is both old and new, hav- 
 ing been begun in 1692 and altered from time 
 jto time ever since ; and it is a rather imposing 
 structure. 
 
 At the southwest corner of the Zocalo is the 
 ancient City Hall, "restored" for the Cen- 
 tennial Fete in September, 1910, Within its 
 
 135 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 confines regular meetings of the City Council 
 have been held for 350 years. 
 
 On the site of the present Zocalo or Plaza 
 Mayor the Aztec priests found the symbolic 
 eagle on the cactus, and here they made the 
 center of their town. It was here that Cor- 
 tez found the chief teocalli, about where the 
 Cathedral now stands, and here some of the 
 fiercest fighting was done. This center, the 
 "Aztec forum," became also the center of 
 the Spanish town which immediately began to 
 grow, the waterways about it being filled up 
 to make streets. Little by little, through the 
 centuries, the lakes have receded, the canals 
 have been filled, more or less successful drain- 
 age has been effected, until it is harder to con- 
 ceive the ancient city, with waterways regu- 
 larly intersecting its streets, and beyond, upon 
 the two "inland seas," one salt, one fresh, the 
 myriad canoes bringing in their tribute, — ^this 
 is even harder than to imagine Ely or some 
 of the other Cathedral towns of England as 
 formerly upon islands. 
 
 The drainage canal which makes the chief 
 guarantee of security against flood and fever, 
 was contemplated as early as the fourteenth 
 century, begun in 160.21 abandoned and re- 
 
 136 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 begun under different authorities, including 
 that of Maximilian, and at last finished by 
 .-Resident JDiaZjjTL 1896, at a cost of sixteen 
 million dollars. It does not prevent the soil 
 from being marshy, so that cellars are impos- 
 sible and the death rate, though reduced from 
 60 per thousand to 18 per thousand, is still 
 more than it would be if the city were on 
 higher ground not far away. One may give 
 only qualified belief to the theory that vagrant 
 cows trod out the city plan of Boston; but 
 clearly enough the site of Mexico was deter- 
 mined when jealous neighbors of the Aztecs 
 would not let them settle anywhere else. Why 
 the Spaniards clung to the unwholesome choice 
 is less clear. One viceroy in the sixteenth 
 century asked permission of the crown to move 
 the capital to a better situation where are now 
 the suburbs of San Angel and Tacubaya; but 
 by that time, so far had growth proceeded, 
 the change would have cost $50,000,000 and 
 it was forbidden by the ungenerous monarch 
 as impractical. 
 
 The Alameda, the other center, is a more 
 aristocratic park, very beautiful, and associa- 
 ted in sentiment with Carlota, who did much 
 to improve it. Just before reaching it, on the 
 
 137 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 way from the Zocalo, one sees the only mod- 
 erately impressive though very costly post 
 office, too much lightened and weakened in ap- 
 j)earance by broken surfaces and open spaces 
 near the top, but really one of the best post- 
 office buildings in the world. The interior 
 provokes no criticism. Its superb marble, 
 Italian bronze gratings, and richness of mate- 
 rial throughout, together with the general 
 plan, suggest a building for some art purpose 
 rather than for the business of a government 
 department ; but it serves no less well for that. 
 The eight-million-dollar theater at the east 
 end of the Alameda is a thing to challenge ad- 
 miration at once. Let us hope no one will 
 insist on gilding its statuary or otherwise ruin- 
 ing its delicate beauty. Its curtain, a wonder- 
 full glass mosaic picture of the mountains 
 Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, as they loom 
 before the city, was made by Tiffany in New 
 York. One cannot help wondering what use 
 will be made of so fine a theater when it is 
 finished, seeing that Mexico has no drama 
 worthy of the name and no native actors 
 worth mentioning. Suggestion has been made 
 and I think a semi-official promise been given 
 that first-class companies from the United 
 
 138 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 States will be offered the use of the building 
 free, except for the cost of lighting. If the 
 government does this, the educative effect 
 should be considerable. Good opera, indeed, 
 especially Italian opera, is already heard and 
 appreciated — I heard Tetrazzini in Mexico 
 before she had ever sung in New York. How- 
 ever, every Latin- American capital must have 
 its costly national theater, so why cavil as to 
 what shall be done with it? It is a conven- 
 tional ornament. To speculate on what could 
 have been done in the way of model tenements 
 with the millions spent here is equally idle. 
 The tenements will come; and the children of 
 the poor will be taught to live otherwise than 
 wallowing in filth. For the beautifully clean 
 asphalt streets of Mexico do run close to only 
 half-hidden wretchedness with which the worst 
 negro alley in our own vaunted Washington 
 is not to be compared. The people are not 
 descended from the cleanly Mayas, but from 
 the less scrupulous Aztecs; they have long 
 been living in conditions alien to them, of 
 which they are neither the makers nor the mas- 
 ters and which give little room for dignified 
 human life. So in looking at them one is 
 grateful for visions of the people in the mar- 
 
 139 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 ket of Tehuantepec, or even, oppressed as 
 they are, those in the fields of Yucatan. 
 
 Let us not be accused of wandering far 
 from the Alameda, for, as just intimated, we 
 have turned but a little aside. 
 
 I was happy enough to know this lovely 
 park when one could pass all along it without 
 being startled, amazed, and shocked by the 
 colossal statue of Juarez which now fronts 
 Avenida Juarez at about the middle point of 
 the southern edge. Colossal as is the statue, 
 one feels what must be the instant effect when 
 a great wreath, not of marble but of gold, is 
 clapped down upon iis head by one of the like- 
 wise colossal angels. There are urns, also of 
 gold, that claim at least as much attention as 
 the central figure, and there are two lions be- 
 ing relentlessly crushed by a weight on the 
 small of their backs. One fancies that some 
 enemy of Juarez must have had to do with this 
 hideous perpetration. If the gold leaf could 
 be all removed, the total effect would be less 
 than half as bad. 
 
 The Juarez statue is representative of 
 many things. Mexican aptitude for drawing, 
 design, pen-work, wood carving, painting and 
 all allied arts, on the side of mere facility, is 
 
 140 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 almost unbelievable to an American. There 
 is hardly a school where some boy cannot 
 draw the teacher either in likeness or in carica- 
 ture as he chooses. There is no church society 
 or other little local group that cannot have a 
 memorial or memento nicely engrossed with- 
 out going outside its own membership. The 
 love of color and of ornament is everywhere. 
 So it is with music. Every village has its 
 brass band. The tattered peons will stand 
 for hours listening to music that, in the United 
 States, would be too good to be popular. The 
 military bands of Mexico play not only with 
 zest, but with soul, and are acknowledged to 
 Te among the best in the world. To hear the 
 national artthem played as they often play it 
 is to hear a thing which will never be for- 
 gotten. But restraint of taste seems lacking 
 among rich and poor, ignorant and educated. 
 Women overdress. Men make display pup- 
 pets of themselves. Apart from the outside 
 severity of the conventional dwelling, architec- 
 ture tends to the ornate, the overglorified. 
 This is not a universal indictment; it is a state- 
 ment of general observation. The emotional 
 susceptibility, the responsiveness, the manual 
 dexterity, the mental ingenuity, and the tem- 
 
 141 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 peramental patience being undoubtedly pres- 
 ent, there would seem reason to hope that 
 increase of general culture, and a fuller 
 liberation of the spirit of the nation as democ- 
 racy advances, will bring in larger creative- 
 ness than we matter-of-fact Americans have 
 yet attained. The really superb achievements 
 in painting at times when conditions were at 
 all favorable, are a promise of this. Sculp- 
 ture, of course, is a severer test, and architec- 
 ture the severest of all. 
 
 Up and down the Alameda on Sunday 
 morning walk the "quality" of Mexico City, 
 listening to the best band in the Republic. On 
 Sunday afternoon -the same people ride be- 
 hind Kentucky-bred and other thoroughbred 
 horses, though usually in quaint, comfortable 
 carriages, out past the Alameda, along the 
 Paseo de la Reforma, past the great bronze 
 statue of Charles V of Spain, and that of the 
 valiant Cuauhtemoc, through splendid avenues 
 of trees, to Chapultepec. To Chapultepec, in 
 a hired coach, an inexpensive thing in Mexico 
 City, let us betake ourselves. There, at sun- 
 down, leaning over a parapet on one of the 
 inclined approaches to the castle, aware of its 
 reminiscent though not dreadful shadow be- 
 
 142 
 
SIGHT-SEEING AT THE CAPITAL 
 
 hind us, aware of the sad, sempiternal great 
 trees below, we will gaze off to the tender 
 color and stupendous bulk of Popocatepetl 
 and his consort, the White Lady (Ixtacci- 
 huatl), as they float in the haze and last glow 
 of evening. Here Montezuma took his ease. 
 He must have walked often at nightfall under 
 those same trees, which are a thousand years 
 old. Here Maximilian and Carlota dreamed 
 their dreams. Here, it may be, American 
 soldier boys, in 1847, rested after a not too 
 glorious fray and forgot to question the 
 wherefore of present commands in musing 
 upon "the old woe of the world." Change has 
 written its record here as surely if not in as 
 hard characters as on the Palatine or the Ac- 
 ropolis. Yet the cypress trees live and grow, 
 with a kind of melancholy vigor which proph- 
 esies long continuance and succession of their 
 kind to witness the coming and the passing 
 of many another generation and perhaps still 
 changing races of men. 
 
 Those who profess to know a gay capital 
 when they see it declare that Mexico City is 
 not such. It has its clubs, its cafes, its showy 
 balls, its handsome women, its glare of lights 
 at night, its bullfight on Sunday in the 
 
 143 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 largest bull ring in the world, and its various 
 other pleasures and vices. Its people are 
 vivacious and, in the main, happy even when 
 a political cloud of dread omen hangs over 
 them. Hardly any people can be more lavish 
 in expenditure for play or more extravagantly 
 overdressed. 
 
 That a strain of seriousness, bordering on 
 melancholy, and quite distinct from the heavy 
 solemnity ascribed to the English in proverbs, 
 does seem present even in their enjoyment 
 cannot be denied. So perhaps Mexico is not 
 a gay capital. I am sure that neither New 
 York nor Washington is gay. Perhaps Paris 
 or Monte Carlo, analytically considered, is 
 not. Nothing is gay that is not naive, spon' 
 taneous, youthful; and Mexico has memories 
 enough to make it old. 
 
 144 
 
XI 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 IT has already been said that the national 
 memory of Mexico before the coming of 
 Cortez is largely tradition. The country 
 was under the baneful domination of Spain 
 from 1521, when the subjugation of the Az- 
 tecs was completed, to 1821, when Augustin 
 de Iturbide, sent to suppress a revolution, led 
 his forces over to the insurgents and became 
 the first head of independent Mexico. There 
 had been uprisings before, notably one in 
 J„9JJDLled by Miguel Hidalgo, a priest, whose 
 statue adorns some public square in almost 
 every Mexican city; but the movements had 
 succeeded_^only in creating and increasing a 
 desire for independence. There had been at- 
 tempts, too, on the part of some governors 
 and viceroys to mitigate the condition of the 
 people and suppress the worst abuses of the 
 clergy. On the whole, however, the Spanish 
 rule in Mexico, as in every other Spanish 
 
 145 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 colony, was one of avarice, hardness, religious 
 bigotry, and coercion. Perhaps the Inquisi- 
 tion was never practised in more devilish op- 
 position to the principles it invoked than here. 
 In no land have the people shown more of the 
 stuff of which martyrs are made, whether in 
 the cause of patriotism or in that of true re- 
 ligion. Initiative, though often strikingly 
 shown, may at times have been lacking, but 
 never the resolution to suffer and to persevere. 
 With the accession of Iturbide," who became 
 the first Emperor, the Inquisition at least 
 passed away. Other benefits were slower in 
 coming. 
 
 China and Russia alone were greater in ex- 
 tent than the empire of which Iturbide found 
 himself in command. It included Honduras 
 to the south, and to the northward set up 
 claims on the western half of the continent 
 even as far as the present border of Canada. 
 There were as yet, however, neither settled 
 principles of control, nor any means of 
 developing this almost inconceivable realm. 
 Through massacre and war, the Aztec empire 
 of thirty million souls had shrunk to a popula- 
 tion_pf fifteen millions. Soundness could not 
 be attained in a moment, even had the new ad- 
 
 146 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 ministration been the wisest. Disintegration 
 began. Scarcely a year passed before Gua- 
 temala seceded, and already a formidable re- 
 publican movement had got under way. An- 
 tonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who had helped 
 Iturbide to break the Spanish rule, now pro- 
 claimed the end of Iturbide's own power and 
 the establishment of a republic. This was at 
 the end of 1822. 
 
 With many ups and downs and much of 
 intermittent warfare, the Mexican republic 
 was maintained from 1822 to 1864, when the 
 French interfered. During this period not 
 only had Guatemala seceded, but Texas, on 
 account of impatience among American set- 
 tlers with the erratic and intolerant ways of 
 President Santa Anna, and influenced by the 
 Southern party of the United States, had de- 
 clared its independence. The war against the 
 "North Americans" had been foiight unsuc- 
 cessfully, and more than a half million square 
 miles of territory outside of Texas had been 
 relinquished as a forfeit of the struggle. 
 Santa Anna, after a downfall and a return to 
 power, had sold still another fifty thousand 
 square miles to the United States. Yet in- 
 ternally the nation improved; Santa Anna 
 
 147 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 had been thrust out at last in 1855 and the 
 dictatorship — for so it was — gave place to an 
 actual republic. Benito Juarez, first as Min- 
 ister of Justice, then as President, formulated 
 what William H. Seward called the best plan 
 of government ever devised. True, to make 
 his admittedly right plans effective involved 
 a struggle, the end of which was not to be in 
 his lifetime, nor perhaps in ours. It was part 
 of a world struggle to establish the right of 
 all human creatures, not only to political and 
 religious liberty, but also to some freedom in 
 the exercise of their own productive powers 
 and a share in the bounty of nature. The 
 people, however, made their loyalty to Juarez 
 unmistakable, and no more hopeful sign could 
 have developed than the growth of an en- 
 lightened, consistent public sentiment. A 
 new Constitution was adopted inJL§57. The 
 jurisdiction of ecclesiastical and military 
 courts over civil cases was declared at an end, 
 an evil which Iturbide's constitution had not 
 even sought to remove. Religious toleration 
 was guaranteed, the separation of church and 
 state was declared, the control of the church 
 over cemeteries was denied, the right of the 
 church to possess landed property was abol- 
 
 148 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 ished, civil marriage was instituted. The ne- 
 cessity for the two last-named measures may 
 well be explained at this point. The Roman 
 Catholic Church in Mexico, while the people 
 still lived in abject poverty, was the richest 
 church establishment in the world, owning 
 then over one-third of the total wealth of the 
 nation, or about $300,000,000 worth of prop- 
 erty. Even Roman Catholics, outside the re- 
 actionary, group, admit that such a state of 
 affairs is not desirable. Madame Calderon 
 de la Barca, herself a devout Catholic, gave 
 warning as early as 1841 that if reforms were 
 not made by the church itself, they would be 
 forced upon it, and that its cathedrals would 
 perhaps be turned to "meeting houses" by 
 Mexico's neighbors from the north. Regard- 
 ing marriage, it is a curious reflection that this 
 sacrament, first instituted to meet the needs of 
 the alienated classes, to whom the old Roman 
 law denied the right, had in Mexico and other 
 Spanish countries been made so expensive that 
 ihe poor could no longer aiford it. Many 
 thousands of children were illegitimately born 
 because their parents could not pay the ex- 
 tortionate fees of the clergy. The institution 
 of civil marriage did away with this to a great 
 
 149 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 extent, and to-day no marriage in Mexico has 
 legality except the civil marriage. The church, 
 however, dissuaded or intimidated many from 
 availing themselves of civil marriage, as in- 
 deed it does in many cases to-day. Similarly, 
 the papal authorities threatened excommuni- 
 cation to all who professed liberal ideas. 
 Juarez answered by banishing the bishops, the 
 Papal Nuncio, and the Spanish representa- 
 tive. Though civil war followed^ the pos- 
 sibility of rallying the friends of liberty by an 
 appeal to the people and of defying supersti- 
 tion was proved. 
 
 In 1861 Napoleon III, seeing the United 
 States on the verge of civil war and unable to 
 enforce the Monroe Doctrine, conceived a 
 gigantic scheme for the re-establishment of 
 Latin power in the New World. He would 
 recognize the Southern Confederacy and 
 strengthen it by all means in his power. Pie 
 even held out to the Southern party the sug- 
 gestion that if they should set up and make 
 firm an independent confederacy, a union of 
 Mexico with it would be favored in Europe. 
 A considerable party in Mexico desired this 
 extension of what had already happened to 
 Texas. Mexican refugees and reactionaries 
 
 150 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 in France viewed it with no favor, preferring 
 a French protectorate; and Napoleon was 
 treating with them while he falsely professed 
 to favor the other plan. So the wily Bona- 
 parte helped to precipitate the American civil 
 war. To England he represented the desir- 
 ability of limiting the power of the United 
 States, but concealed his dream of a Latin 
 and Roman Catholic empire. To Spain he 
 revealed this dream of his but professed an in- 
 tention that he seems never to have enter- 
 tained — that of placing a Spanish prince on 
 the throne. To Austria he divulged more fully 
 the plan afterward attempted — ^that of com- 
 pensating Austria for recent injuries which 
 he had inflicted, by placing a representative of 
 the Hapsburg line over the new empire; but 
 even to Austria he did not emphasize his in- 
 tention that France should control the puppet 
 thus set up. 
 
 The pretext for definite action came when 
 Juarez, as President of Mexico, announced 
 that nothing could be paid and that no at- 
 tempt would be made to pay anything on the 
 Mexican national debt for two years. This 
 was not repudiation and financiers have de- 
 clared it as sound a thing as, in the impover- 
 
 151 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 ished condition of the country, he could have 
 done. Two years of peace would enable him, 
 he thought, to resume payment. Unfortu- 
 nately, however, the announcement gave a 
 pretext for France, Spain, and England, all 
 creditors, to pounce down upon him. The 
 United States, also a creditor, refused a tardy 
 invitation to join them, and announced its 
 readiness to loan money to Mexico if desired. 
 A military expedition started in 1861, but 
 England and Spain almost immediately 
 learned that they were being duped and with- 
 drew. Juarez was able to rally a stronger 
 support and maintain a greater resistance 
 than had been anticipated. The United 
 States, which had steadfastly recognized the 
 little Indian statesman's government and re- 
 fused to recognize the usurper, astounded all 
 Europe by the resources put forth in dealing 
 with the Southern secession. Even the South 
 itself, incensed at Napoleon^sjtrickery, turned 
 ffonihimand his schemes. Certain politicians 
 went so far as to propose that North and 
 South make a truce till their united armies 
 could sweep the French invaders into the sea. 
 It was an exaggeration to declare, as has been 
 done, that either President Davis or President 
 
 152 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 Ivincoln favored this. The idea was consider- 
 ably discussed, however, which fact in itself 
 shows that unanimity of American feeling re- 
 garding Mexico had come to be assumed pre- 
 vious to Lee's surrender. The "Emperor" 
 Maximilian, for whom, with his beautiful 
 young wife, Carlota, an appropriation of 
 about a million dollars a year had been made 
 from the hypothetical resources of a dis- 
 tracted, oppressed, and bankrupt nation, had 
 proved equal only to the ornamental and cere- 
 monial requirements of his office. So of all 
 the deceived and disappointed, parties to the 
 whole scheme, barring the unhappy Maxi- 
 milian and Carlota, no one was more disap- 
 pointed and humiliated than Napoleon III. 
 The civil war in the United States being at an 
 end, and emphatic demands for the evacuation 
 of Mexico being made by the American Secre- 
 tary of State, he felt obliged to comply. The 
 pretty Emperor and Empress refusing to 
 join in this, he abandoned them. Maximilian 
 was captured and shot at Queretaro, June 19, 
 1867, and Carlota, after a vain journey and 
 appeal to both Napoleon and the Pope, went 
 mad. The Mexican people have always re- 
 garded the lily-fair prince and his beautiful 
 
 163 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 wife as unfortunate rather than as astute and 
 sinister figures. 
 
 Now comes the most problematic turn in 
 Mexican history. Juarez returned to the cap- 
 ital and took up the details of government as 
 nearly as possible where they had been inter- 
 rupted five years before. One of his strong- 
 est military supporters had been General Por- 
 firio Diaz, whose patron and friend he was 
 from the time when Diaz, as a boy, entered 
 the law school at Oaxaca. He had trusted 
 and befriended Diaz all along, and the 
 younger man's loyalty up to this time seems 
 not to be questioned. So far as the tangle of 
 diverging stories and deliberate coloring of 
 records will permit a foreigner easily to 
 judge, the military service of the young man 
 had been of highest value. He had displayed 
 courage, foresight, astuteness, and almost in- 
 credible vigor. Up to this time the relations 
 of the two men were such as coming genera- 
 tions in Mexico might have looked upon with 
 pride and gratitude. Juarez, however, was 
 not only an enemy of church domination and 
 of foreign domination, he was also an enemy 
 of military domination. Himself a repre- 
 sentative m blood, experience, i»nd tradition 
 
 154 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 of the class who had, perhaps, sacrificed more 
 than any other for the maintenance of the 
 nation, he firmly believed in their capacity, if 
 they could have wise, patriotic leadership for 
 a few years, to learn self-government. His 
 critics regard him as a doctrinaire in this, 
 and point not only to the untutored condition 
 of the Indians, but to the fact that the mil- 
 itary leaders who had helped to sustain the 
 government must of course be reckoned with. 
 They were sure, in view of their habits, to de- 
 mand larger rewards than could accrue under 
 a democratic government. Such demands they 
 did in fact promptly make. What more 
 simple and natural than that the country 
 should be divided into military departments, 
 that each general should be given a depart- 
 ment from which he could farm revenues and 
 in which he might administer government as 
 he chose, and that the only return demanded 
 should be unfailing payment of a quota, un- 
 failing military support when needed, and un- 
 failing assent to all the acts of the central 
 government at all times? The plan of Juarez 
 was undeniably more complex and far more 
 difficult, one of the difiiculties being that the 
 generals would declare war on him if he did 
 
 165 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 not satisfy them. He chose the harder way. 
 Diaz refused to follow, artfully declaring that 
 he could but sympathize with his old com- 
 panions in arms, as years of service had un- 
 fitted them for high place in democratic civil 
 life. He could by no means take the sword 
 against them, he said, and the nation was not 
 ready for the higher course. 
 
 Assuming that Juarez was right, had he 
 been heartily supported by Diaz, there is little 
 doubt that Diaz would in due time have been 
 chosen president upon the same platform. He 
 stood second to Juarez in national promi- 
 nence, and as a military figure had no equal. 
 Supposing that Juarez was wrong, on the 
 other hand, it seems strange that Diaz's with- 
 drawal and later his active opposition in arms 
 never accomplished the downfall of the little 
 Indian idealist. Harassed by some whose 
 support would have comforted and enor- 
 mously aided him, nevertheless, until he died 
 suddenly in 1872, five years after the depart- 
 ure of the French, fifteen years after his first 
 elevation to the presidency, and seventeen 
 years after he had announced the Juarez law 
 concerning courts of justice, Juarez was able 
 to maintain his government through that pub- 
 
 156 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 lie support on which he relied. At Juarez's 
 death, there was perhaps only one other man 
 capable of weathering the storms to which 
 the presidential office was subjected. In 
 1876, after four troublous years, in which he 
 himself led part of the disturbances, Porfirio 
 1 Diaz became president, and with the nominal 
 exception of one four-year term, he ruled the 
 country thenceforth for thirty-five years, till 
 the-spring of 1911. He had come in, how- 
 ever, upon a different principle from that of 
 Juarez, and by a different principle he ruled. 
 The material development, which means also 
 the exploitation of the national resources by 
 foreign capital, was phenomenal. The main- 
 tenance of order in spite of unsuccessful up- 
 risings of which a censored press told little, 
 was, on the whole, either commendable or 
 sinister, according to the point of view, but in 
 either case was effective. Foreign capital and 
 foreign settlers were encouraged to partic- 
 ipate in the wealth of the country. It was 
 even said that an Englishman, a German, or 
 an American could enjoy under Diaz more 
 security in his business enterprise than any 
 native might feel, and conduct his enterprises 
 on better terms than any native not belonging 
 
 157 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 to the official governmental group. Mean- 
 while, the friends of the deposed ruler argue 
 that everything possible has been done to edu- 
 cate the masses and make them ready for 
 what Juarez proclaimed fifty years ago — a 
 democratic government. There is a school in 
 every municipality of the Republic and 
 2,000,000 children, they declare, are in the 
 public schools — by no means an incredible 
 figure. Assimaing that progress is being made, 
 the foreign observer is inevitably brought to 
 feel that after thirty-five years of military 
 despotism, the common people have much left 
 to desire, and even if inclined to think that 
 the dream of Juarez was impractical, he will 
 still wish that it might have come true. As 
 for the people themselves, in so far as they 
 rise to the level of intelligent belief, they are 
 enthusiastic, persistent, and unwavering in 
 their assertion that, given a leader of the 
 Juarez school, they could have realized 
 Juarez's program. Ultimately, of course, a 
 people will obtain for themselves a govern- 
 ment approximating what they deserve and 
 have intelligence to appreciate. The Mexi- 
 cans have always coveted better than they 
 have had, and have never admitted that the 
 
 158 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 iron hand of irresponsible power was toler- 
 able. That President Diaz, though strong, 
 efficient, and it may be patriotic in motives, 
 was ever in all his "unanimous" elections 
 really the object of popular choice, has only 
 the flimsiest appearance of verity. His final 
 election in 1910 was a caricature. The op- 
 position forces had been shattered by the ar- 
 bitrary and forcible breaking up of their meet- 
 ings, the imprisonment of their leaders, and 
 the intimidation by soldiers at the polls of 
 voters with the hardihood to present them- 
 selves. The defenders of the government 
 profess that a dignified and peaceful cam- 
 paign would have been tolerated. Those in- 
 terested in it, and many foreign witnesses as 
 well, have declared that the campaign was 
 notable for self-restraint under trying condi- 
 tions. However that may be, an actual elec- 
 tion was not permitted. The president, 
 through members of his cabinet, had been 
 warned that if the nation were thwarted then, 
 revolution would follow. Uprisings did occur 
 at once following the so-called re-election and 
 within a few weeks took on serious propor- 
 tions. 
 
 Travel and much inquiry in pacific quarters 
 159 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of the country during the struggle warrant 
 me in the assertion that discontent was almost 
 universal. Fundamentally its cause was eco- 
 nomic; unjust division of benefits, preposter- 
 ously unequal distribution of taxes, and out- 
 rageous dispossession of small land owners 
 from their ancestral homes, being averred. 
 But the immediate demand was for political 
 reform. The progressive movement harks 
 back to the little Indian legislator of 1855 as 
 its prophet. 
 
 Up to the present there is only one name in 
 all their annals, the mention of which will 
 bring an emotional response of pride and ven- 
 eration among Mexican citizens from the 
 northern to the southern end of the country — 
 one name that they delight to put beside that 
 of Washington, who might have been a king, 
 but who would not — and that is the name of 
 Juarez. So strong has this sentiment been 
 all along, that the president and every repre- 
 sentative of the government, ignoring the his- 
 toric relation of their regime to his, must join 
 with what heart they could in the annual and 
 occasional demonstrations of it. If a second 
 name is put with that of Juarez in any spon- 
 taneous way, it is that of the patriot priest 
 
 160 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 and first great martyr of Mexican liberty, 
 Hidalgo. The time may come when, for a 
 widely different service, a more qualified ap- 
 preciation will be given to Porfirio Diaz with 
 something like the same general accord; but 
 the time is not yet. For better or worse he 
 has had his day and the future will judge 
 him. The revolution of 1911 was not directed 
 against an old man whose control could no 
 longer be more than nominal and whom the 
 people would have been willing to let die in 
 peace, it was directed against those who might 
 pretend to be his logical successors without 
 having demonstrated the only right that can 
 ever justify despotism, the right of might. 
 Such right in his years of early vigor Porfirio 
 Diaz proved in a remarkable degree. Such 
 right will have to be shown by his successors 
 if he is to have any. Otherwise, and probably, 
 a new order will prevail. That something of 
 the rigor of the Diaz policy is needed while 
 outlaws defy the government and terrorize 
 peaceful farms and villages almost every one 
 believes. It is one thing to insist on law and 
 order, however, and quite another thing to in- 
 sist that all shall favor the existing ofiicers for 
 continuance in power. This Diaz did. A 
 
 161 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 change must come and be made permanent. 
 That its definite arrival might have been vig- 
 orously and convincingly asserted at once by 
 the Madero government, and not have needed 
 confirmation through the further drenching of 
 the country in blood, is the wish of every 
 friend of the Mexican people. 
 
 In dismissing this subject a word should be 
 said about the organic form of the govern- 
 ment. The Constitution of Juarez has never 
 been abrogated or greatly altered. It ex- 
 pounds the na;ture of the Mexican government 
 as federal — ^that is, composed of free and sov- 
 ereign individual states — as representative, 
 and as democratic. It distinguishes three co- 
 ordinate branches of government, adopting 
 our own fiction that the judicial function is 
 neither legislative nor executive. The rights 
 of individuals are guaranteed, in some re- 
 spects more fully than by our Constitution. 
 The mechanism with which to carry out this 
 scheme is provided for and has in fact been 
 preserved — a President chosen by an electoral 
 college, a bicameral Congress whose mem- 
 bers are nominally elected by the peoplcj and 
 a system of courts like our own. The separate 
 state legislatures correspond to ours. In 
 
 162 
 
THE GOVERNMENT 
 
 practical working, since the death of Juarez, 
 there has been but one department of govern- 
 ment, that is the executive. Under Diaz the 
 governor of a state was his representative, the 
 jefe politico of a district was responsible to 
 the governor; and the people had nothing to 
 do with choosing any of them. Still it is 
 something to have had the right principles 
 laid down in theory and acknowledged in 
 form. It makes difficult the opposition of 
 any argument but force against the institu- 
 tions of democracy, and gives the progressive 
 group an immediate basis of procedure. 
 
 163 
 
XII 
 
 XOCHIMILCO 
 
 THE valley of Morelos lies close to the 
 valley of Mexico, though at a lower 
 level and with a high wall between. It 
 is possible, if one has pneumonia and hours 
 are precious, to take a train in the unhealth- 
 ful capital at daybreak, arrive in balmy Cuer- 
 naAaca by noon, and be declared on the way 
 to recovery next day. Under usual condi- 
 tions, however, the valley of Mexico is not to 
 be so eagerly left. While the nights are often 
 chilly, the climate is otherwise almost irre- 
 proachable and the natural charms of the val- 
 ley are worthy of some large-visioned poet of 
 outdoors. It should not be discredited because 
 it had one piece of lowland whose open drain- 
 age the Spaniards could stop and upon which 
 a somewhat miasmic though beautiful city 
 could be built. So even if one cannot tarry 
 for months to etch in the picture of maguey 
 fields on the drier flat lands, of cypress trees, 
 
 164 
 
XOCHIMILCO 
 
 of dome-crowned villages, and of encircling 
 mountains, at least one can pay the respect 
 of a slow departure. This may be done by 
 way of the Viga, the one Aztec canal that still 
 remains in use, leading south toward Cuerna- 
 vaca as far as Xochimilco. 
 
 There are those who will tell you that they 
 have seen this canal, so extravagantly described 
 in books, and that it is no more than a slimy 
 ooze. They have seen the miserable diminu- 
 endo at the city end that is finally lost in a 
 sewer ; but they do not know the Viga. What 
 stream, even the mightiest, without very spe- 
 cial protection, can make its way through a 
 city of 450,000 inhabitants and still remain 
 "undefiled for the undefiled"? Even at the 
 city end of this ancient canal our friends, if 
 alert, might have seen something to describe 
 other than the excrements of obscene brew- 
 eries along the banks, and unlimited oceans of 
 mud; they might have seen the people, one of 
 the superlatively clean tribes, thank Heaven! 
 propelling their dugouts up and down, and in 
 the dugouts enough vegetables for a thousand 
 tables, besides flowers in quantities really, ex- 
 citing to think of. 
 
 For thirteen miles as one goes out along the 
 165 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Viga there are no tributaries. There is only 
 one channel of nearly uniform width, arched 
 by quaint bridges and enlivened by an unend- 
 ing succession of barges going to market with 
 garden truck, and of little canoes that dart 
 along upon other errands. Gradually the 
 water becomes purer till it is void of offense. 
 Then begins perfect enjoyment. The re- 
 moter plain may be somewhat brown in the 
 dry season, varied only by the maguey, cousin 
 to our old friend the henequin plant, while 
 near by on either hand are luscious green 
 fields with cattle wading or grazing at will. 
 The canoe moves easily, propelled not by oars 
 or paddles but by a long, light pole thrust to 
 the bottom. In places this is varied by toss- 
 ing a rope to one of the boatmen, who leaps 
 cheerfully ahead with it over his shoulder, now 
 in water, now upon a tow path, his muscular 
 though not heavy limbs bare to the thigh. 
 Boys fish from the banks. New things are 
 constantly appearing, not to tease the eye and 
 the mind as on a railway journey, but to be- 
 guile the imagination. At last, after about 
 four hours, the canal resolves itself into a 
 great number of smaller canals which are fed 
 by springs in themselves worth a visit, and are 
 
 166 
 
XOCHIMILCO 
 
 conducted in and out among the so-called 
 "floating gardens" so as to make every gar- 
 den an island. Within the memory of men 
 still living much of this area was a lake and 
 some of the gardens were actually floating; 
 but now the little oblong patches of soil rest 
 upon bottom. The willows that grow straight 
 up like Lombardy poplars were once only 
 stakes to keep the unique real property from 
 moving off. Masses of water plants buoyed 
 up by air chambers on their stalks float upon 
 what remains of the lake and show how land 
 began to form. As would be guessed from 
 such an origin, the gardens have the richest 
 mold, they never lack water, and the sun 
 smiles upon them as only a southern sun can. 
 Each is as large as a good town lot and any 
 of them if actually afloat would sink from the 
 weight of vegetables and flowers. The poppy, 
 the sweet pea, and the bachelor's button are 
 favorite flowers, though carnations and mar- 
 guerites also abound and roses are by no 
 means uncommon. All these and other blos- 
 soms hang down and are reduplicated in the 
 water. They scramble over the tops of the 
 houses. In daylight or in moonlight they 
 make incomparable pictures ^X every turn. 
 
 167 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 The graceful, brown-armed figures gliding 
 about in their canoes strike no jarring note. 
 Xothing annoys. The most appropriate ex- 
 clamation at the crystal springs of Xochi- 
 milco is, "I did not believe there was such a 
 place in the world! " 
 
 Barges go down heavy with the current to 
 Mexico and come back light. Few large 
 cities have sources of so abundant supply for 
 vegetables and flowers, with means of trans- 
 portation so cheap. Xochimilco was a source 
 of supplies for the Aztec capital in the old 
 days, and, unless scholars have wrongly trans- 
 lated, an occasional source of victims for the 
 Aztec sacrificial stone. Whoever lived here 
 at any time, if he had marauding neighbors, 
 must have been an easy prey, for gentleness 
 and soft confiding in the loveliness of an 
 idyllic world are as natural here as a square 
 front to all comers must be in a country of 
 highland blasts. A friend of mine had a 
 quarrelsome retainer who chose to follow him 
 from one locality to another and always man- 
 aged to involve himself and his miaster in 
 trouble. They went to Xochimilco and 
 Gabriel fought with no one. It seems he 
 could find no one to fight with, 
 
 168 
 
XOCHIMILCO 
 
 It cost three Mexican dollars ($1.50) to 
 bring out seven of us in a large covered canoe, 
 with enough luggage to burden four or five 
 carriers in transferring from the canoe to the 
 house. A canal ran very near the house occu- 
 pied by our friends, the only foreign family 
 in the village, by whom we were to be enter- 
 tained. A canal runs near everybody's door 
 in Xochimilco; there are a hundred miles of 
 them at least. Fish abound and come in fine 
 condition from the cold water. We saw many 
 goldfish of no diminutive size, and bought for 
 fifty centavos a wriggling carp that weighed 
 about six pounds. 
 
 This American friend, at whose house we 
 stopped, an engineer, was in charge of work 
 installing a new plant to increase the water 
 supply of Mexico City. He took us along a 
 small canal until suddenly it widened, deep- 
 ened, and came to an end. We were floating 
 upon a basin seventy-five feet in diameter, 
 twenty-five feet deep, and filled with gushing 
 pure water. It was one of the marvelous 
 springs at Xochimilco, flowing about eight 
 million gallons in twenty-four hours. There 
 are several others, not so large, but still of 
 great output and all of the same pure water, 
 
 169 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 fed probably by the melting snow and ice of 
 Popocatepetl. 
 
 A feature of every landscape hereabout is 
 the little church. Above the fringe of green 
 vegetables or of glorious bloom, over the 
 thatch of the hut, between the willows, against 
 the bulk of the mountains, there is certain to 
 be a church in the view. We must have seen 
 twenty, all commanding because of the low- 
 ness of the houses round about, all venerable- 
 looking and harmonious with the feeling of 
 the place; never, on any of them, a "steeple." 
 The spire with its call to upward pursuit of 
 the unattainable, is no part of Mexican church 
 architecture. The dome seems to suggest 
 contemplation and repose. True, the Span- 
 iards were restless enough, but their restless- 
 ness was not upon the side that churches 
 represent. Concerning religion they leaned 
 back upon authority, and came easily to that 
 perfectness of satisfaction which must have 
 expressed itself powerfully at times to any one 
 who has traveled in Mexico, the land of 
 domes. There are said to be more of these, 
 chiefly of the media naranja (half orange) 
 form, than in any other country in the world. 
 And if the Anglo-Saxon cannot adopt this 
 
 :70 
 
XOCHIMILCO 
 
 form as his emblem, for he is self-conscious, 
 he can be happy in visiting a land whose tem- 
 perament it suits. 
 
 "Xochimilco," our engineer friend declared, 
 "is only the beginning of the most beautiful 
 part of the canal system, for you can travel 
 a full day beyond. I never did get to the end, 
 though on a trip some time ago I went 
 through a string of towns for over thirty 
 miles. I was fascinated with some of the old 
 places — splendid they must have been once; 
 but they had gone down and down as the more 
 intelligent sons of the families were drawn 
 off to the cities, till some fine haciendas were 
 altogether deserted and others occupied only 
 by peons. It was impossible not to build air 
 castles when I thought of what a progressive 
 trained man could do there on some places to 
 be bought almost for the song that he might 
 sing. Cattle of the best breeds would thrive 
 on his wide level fields, vineyards and orchards 
 would spring up at his touch in this perfect 
 climate, water power and streams for irriga- 
 tion would come from the hills to work magic 
 for him, native labor would offer itself cheaper 
 than he ought to wish, and paddle wheels on 
 the canals would carry all his produce to a 
 
 171 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 great market. This will come true for some- 
 body, but for whom? I think it will come 
 true most largely and remain true the longest 
 for Americans, Europeans, or intelligent In- 
 dians, according as one or another of them has 
 most spiritual depth and force — ^most desire 
 to give and to teach among the poor natives 
 and not merely to exploit them. In the end 
 I think all Mexico will be the heritage of 
 those, whoever they are, who come with a will 
 to help. The other sort of thing goes to seed 
 and to rot, as it has once done in this valley; 
 and in the long run social forces among the 
 common people, the allies of the man who 
 helps, will destroy the parasite. As neigh- 
 bors of Mexico we Americans have great pos- 
 sibilities at our doors ; the question is. Are we 
 big enough?" 
 
 My friend the engineer is an idealist, and 
 grows very enthusiastic at times. 
 
 From Xochimilco it is not far to Eslava 
 where, only a day late because of our little 
 journey into a primitive world, we can take 
 the train from Mexico to Cuernavaca. One 
 gets almost a bird's eye view of the region of 
 Mexico City from the top of the range at a 
 height of 10,000 feet. 
 
 in 
 
XIII 
 
 CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 
 
 CUERNAVACA, though not inviting 
 comparison with the little Indian Ven- 
 ice, is in its own way the loveliest spot 
 yet visited. At XochimUco one rubs one's 
 eyes and looks again to make sure that the 
 scene really belongs to the world of wide- 
 awake. At Cuernavaca one settles forthwith 
 into a conviction of always having known the 
 place, and a feeling that evexything here is 
 the normal by which things elsewhere may be 
 tested. With an altitude of only 4500 feet, 
 more than two thousand feet lower than the 
 valley of Mexico, and with a southern ex- 
 posure among sheltering hills, this other val- 
 ley has no cold winter, no cold nights and no 
 hot ones, no droughts, no inconveniences of 
 climate, hot or cold, wet or dry. The town 
 of 7000 inhabitants is all clean, orderly, 
 thrifty, reposeful, and old. The steep and 
 narrow streets, which often become stairways 
 
 173 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of rock, the thick walls, the heavy doors, the 
 elaborate latches and hinges, all bear the testi- 
 mony of age. It is a place of running water, 
 and fountains are numerous. 
 
 Of course the town has its cathedral, this 
 one founded in 1529; and of course, being of 
 sufficient antiquity, it has a palace of Cortez. 
 We visited his residence in Oaxaca, and an- 
 L-flther in Cpyoacan, a suburb of Mexico ,City, 
 this latter being the oldest structure erected 
 by any white man on American soil. Now we 
 must by all means pay our respect to the 
 Ciiernavaca palace, the more because it has 
 Jbeen made the state government building and 
 because it commands from the roof a superb 
 view of the green valley and the peaceful 
 mountains. It was begun by Cortez in !L5,B0..- 
 
 The chief exhibit of Cuernavaca is the 
 i Borda Garden, established about the middle 
 of the eighteenth century by Joseph le Borde, 
 a Frenchman who had made enormous for- 
 tunes in Mexican silver mines. It is said to 
 have cost a million pesos then, but time has 
 added much that the ovsoier could not buy, 
 both in definable beauty and in the pervasive 
 charm of imaginative suggestion. There are 
 old walls, built high and solid enough to en- 
 
 174 
 
CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 
 
 dure; trees grown old but of unfailing vigor; 
 old Moorish fountains that have become 
 weathered and flawed but lost nothing of their 
 airy Saracenic grace; walks that Carlota trod 
 many a time, when Cuernavaca was the sum- 
 mer capital, and when old Joseph, their first 
 owner, had been long sleeping in a poor man's 
 grave; benches on which she must have sat; 
 roses and oleanders that she may have tended, 
 and mangoes whose fruit she may have eaten. 
 You will think more of Carlota in the garden 
 than you will of its original owner whose 
 name it bears; and many other thoughts you 
 will have which you will never convey unless 
 to some one at your side under the shade of 
 the tropical trees with their unfamiliar names 
 and their delicious fruits. 
 
 Cuautla, in climate and general character, 
 needs no description to one who has visited 
 Cuernavaca. It is not quite so old, not quite 
 so large, and not quite so full of romance; 
 but having famous hot sulphur springs is 
 rather more haunted by invalids and resters. 
 
 Not in the state of Morelos, where we have 
 been lingering, but in a state whose name it 
 shares, Puebla has a little more altitude, a 
 little cooler climate, yet the same quality of 
 
 175 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 softness in the air, the, same sulphur water 
 that flows so abundantly in Cuautla, and a 
 degree of the same popularity with those need- 
 ing to be cured. Piiebla, however, is more of 
 a city, and can assimilate these latter visitors 
 as Cuautla cannot. Moreover, Puebla has 
 some charming suburbs and rest spots to 
 which, being a city, it dispatches many of the 
 impotent or the indisposed. With a popula- 
 tion just under one hundred thousand, it nar- 
 rowly misses being the second city in size of 
 the republic ; and if it must yield to- Guadala- 
 jara in this respect, it still claims second place 
 in the consideration of the visitor. It has the 
 name of being conservative as to taste and 
 social customs, anti-foreign, Romanist in re- 
 ligion, reactionary as to politics. Certainly 
 it is not progressive in many of the usual im- 
 plications of the word; but without being so 
 it would seem to have made progress in what- 
 ever contributes to its charm. The capital of 
 the richest state in Mexico, it has a look of 
 comfort and of competence. In architecture, 
 in landscape, in the equipages upon its clean 
 asphalt streets, in the dress of its well-to-do 
 citizens, one is reminded that essential har- 
 monies may be preserved in more than one 
 
 176 
 
CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 
 
 style. Puebla society is accused of being ex- 
 elusive, and perhaps this is confirmed rather 
 than otherwise by the eagerness that I ob- 
 served in the daughter of one of its prominent 
 families, when visiting in another town, to 
 make acquaintance with the American and 
 English colony, including the Protestant 
 church there. If so, when their opportimity 
 for reciprocating came the family were gener- 
 ous beyond expectation in making a little 
 glimpse of their own life possible. I was in- 
 vited to call at the house, which does not hap- 
 pen to a young man in their own set unless he 
 is an accepted suitor. They were meeting an 
 American in his own way. The daughter 
 whom I knew greeted me first, after the 
 servant. I was conducted to where the 
 maternal head of the household and her old- 
 est daughter sat to receive their callers, and 
 was introduced. Then for a few moments I 
 sat in a second parlor with Miss Maria, as I 
 shall name her — an impossible departure from 
 their conventional etiquette — till the younger 
 sisters began to come in one after another, 
 down to a little toddler of four years. Puzzled 
 at first by a stranger whose speech was for- 
 eign, she ended by sitting on my lap. Whether 
 
 177 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 the entry of this beautiful troop was also 
 contrary to established rules I do not know. 
 Some very wise persons will say that of course 
 such special favors were tantamount to a 
 matrimonial acceptance; but they certainly 
 had not the shadow of such meaning. I was 
 not only an American, but I was an American 
 from another city, in Puebla for no more than 
 three or four days, and they had decided to 
 treat me according to American ways of hos- 
 pitality so far as they knew them. If in any 
 particular they happened not to know, they 
 would err on the side of kindness. On a sec- 
 ond call to take leave, I did not see the chil- 
 dren till I was going out, but then found 
 them, all four, in the corridor in a row wait- 
 ing to bid me good-by. It is years since then 
 and I have never met one of the family since ; 
 but this pretty and gracious picture, together 
 with others that I remember of the luxurious 
 and beautiful home and perfectly managed 
 household, is still a source of enjoyment. 
 
 Puebla has more Mexican history than any 
 other city except the capital. Not founded 
 till 1532, when the Spaniards felt the need of 
 a city halfway between and more healthfully 
 located than either Vera Cruz or the Aztec 
 
 178 
 
CUERNAVAGA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 
 
 capital on Lake Texcoco, it nevertheless has a 
 miraculous story of its location, two angels 
 having pointed out the spot to Fray Julian 
 Garces. So it was called Puebla de los 
 Angeles. It soon outgrew the neighboring 
 Indian town of Cholula as Mexico City did 
 its ancient neighbor Xochimilco. Leaping 
 over to modern times, it was captured in 1821 
 by Iturbide, the first ruler of independent 
 Mexico, was occupied by the Americans in 
 1847, and was besieged and taken by the 
 French in 1862. A little later. May 5, 1862, 
 its recapture by General Zaragoza was the 
 most brilliant victory in all the history of 
 Mexican arms, and May 5 has been as great 
 a national holiday ever since as the Fourth 
 of July is with us. The French regained the 
 town again next year and held it till 1867, 
 when it was captured by General Porfirio 
 Diaz, and the French garrison were made 
 prisoners. Zaragoza's victory in 1862 changed 
 the name of the town to Puebla de Zaragoza. 
 No longer a "city of the angels," Puebla is 
 still a city of churches. Any commanding view 
 of it will show from fifty to seventy domes, 
 agreeing in outline with those other domes, 
 Popocatepetl and Orizaba, on either hand, and 
 
 179 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 in color showing all the variety of tiles for 
 the manufacture of which Puebla is noted. 
 Popocatepetl is accompanied by his consort 
 Ixtaccihuatl and also in this case by a strange 
 figure, that of the pyramid of Cholula, nearer 
 at hand. To the north is Malintzi, almost as 
 towering as the other two giants, so that there 
 is always an enclosing rim to the region, and 
 everywhere the land has its bounty of grow- 
 ing crops. 
 
 f Of all the churches, the cathedral is the 
 most notable. Not so large as the cathedral 
 in MexicgCity, it is still very large — 323 feet 
 by 101 feet. If not quite so rich upon the 
 exterior, it is generally felt to be even more 
 harmonious; and within it has not only the 
 same advantage but has also fortunately kept 
 more of the opulence of decoration and fur- 
 nishing that history associates with both these 
 buildings. The interior is even "gorgeous" as 
 described by one writer. It is not only in 
 broad general effects that it gives the impres- 
 sion of richness; whether one examine the 
 onyx and marble altars, columns, and pave- 
 ments, or the wondrous old Gobelin tapestries 
 of extremely pagan subjects given by Charles 
 V of Spain, or the statuary, or the paintings 
 
 180 
 
CUERNAVACA, CUAUTLA, PUEBLA 
 
 by European and Mexican masters, or the 
 wood-carving and inlay work in ivory, the 
 eifect remains throughout of unstinted devo- 
 tion of rich materials, of labor, of ingenuity, 
 and of art. Some discriminating critics re- 
 gard the Puebla cathedral, taking it all to- 
 gether, as more worthy of study than any 
 other church in America, not even excepting 
 that at Mexico. Again, curiously, like the 
 cathedral at the capital, it is not the fashion- 
 able church. 
 
 181 
 
XIV 
 
 A TOLTEC PYRAMID 
 
 FROM Puebla it is less than two hours 
 to Qholula, the town of the pyramid. I 
 speak of going by tramcar and not by 
 that contrivance out of due time, the Inter- 
 oceanic Railway. Not that progress need be 
 lamented, even by the sentimentalist, for it is 
 by innovation, so often deplored as an enemy 
 of romance, that romance is made perpetual. 
 Not till a thing has passed out from daily 
 habit and commonplace utility may fancy be- 
 set it with a glamor of things past; but the 
 consecration is one in which epochs are not 
 finely observed. This quaint and dingy con- 
 veyance, and the tiny mules in front, now 
 tugging pitifully over a hard place, now at a 
 level jog, and again scampering away down 
 some slope before the pursuing car — these 
 might have belonged to any age not ours — so 
 they do not offend. 
 
 On either side as we pass, grain fields show 
 that the earth yields v/illing increase, and at 
 
 .183 
 
A TOLTEC PYRAMID 
 
 intervals are reapers who thrust in their sicldes 
 and turn with tedious movement to lay the 
 grain in sheaves, as was the manner of reap- 
 ing long ago. Such oxen as these that plod 
 along, with yokes rudely bound upon their 
 horns, labor steadily forever on imperishable 
 old Greek bas-reliefs. Somewhat as now we 
 see them, asses went burdened in the time of 
 Mary and Joseph. The jars that are borne on 
 dark and graceful shoulders are of a form 
 long familiar before Rebekah came out from 
 Nahor to draw water. As for the women and 
 girls who are washing at many pools by the 
 way, they are types from the age when Nau- 
 sicaa spread her new-whitened garments by 
 the shore of the sea. 
 
 It was in the afternoon that I arrived at 
 this town so variously celebrated, and found 
 in it neither a remnant of the great and splen- 
 did city which the scribes of Cortez lyingly 
 represented, nor a mere "town of one-story 
 whitewashed mud huts" which was all one 
 mole-eyed modern writer could discover. I 
 found under the dominant shadow of the giant 
 moimd a sleepy and romantic-looking village 
 in which the signs of former Spanish domi- 
 nance are plain, in which the hues of venerable 
 
 183 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 towers and domes seem dissolving under the 
 breath of decay to mingle with the softer air, 
 in which the tones of bells in harmony still call 
 a simple people to worship at unthrifty hours, 
 and in which balconies and grated windows 
 suggest many a fancy of love-making in years 
 gone by. In short, Cholula is a provincial 
 Mexican town. There two civilizations met, 
 the older was nearly obliterated by the other, 
 and that in turn was left to slacken when the 
 usurpers who brought it had been driven out. 
 The impulse of new Mexican life has not been 
 much felt there, so Cholula dreams on in its 
 valley. 
 
 Within five minutes two ragged boys at- 
 tached themselves to me for better or for 
 worse. They first helped me to buy and eat 
 some bananas and mangoes at the market 
 place where a canvass of every booth had to 
 be made before the woman could return 
 change for my dollar, and then it came all in 
 centavos. They pointed out an old sacrificial 
 stone and were able to hint vaguely that it 
 had a fearful history. In fact, it was doubt- 
 less wet many a time with human blood. At 
 each of the churches they informed me as to 
 how much money I should give the sacristan, 
 
 184 
 
A TOLTEC PYRAMID 
 
 having a care, I think, lest my stock of cen- 
 tavos should unduly lessen before they had re- 
 ceived their part. One advised the use of my 
 field glass for looking at a picture in the con- 
 vent; and the other thought me an ill-fur- 
 nished Americano because I had no camera. 
 They sold me for ten centavos — so far had we 
 advanced in friendship — a clay head that is 
 inuy antiguo (very ancient) and for which 
 they had at first asked a dollar. They even 
 became confidential regarding their family 
 affairs. Both father and mother were dead, 
 and their only dependence was an aunt, who 
 was at times very abusive. When I remarked 
 that they did not seem unhappy, both at once, 
 with the mpst aggrieved tone possible, ex- 
 claimed, "Como no, Senor?" ("Pray, why 
 not?") 
 
 Together we sauntered out to the pyramid. 
 This is larger than any other such — about two 
 hundred feet high and more than a mile in 
 circumference. The latter measurement is 
 greater than that of the largest Egyptian 
 pyramid, though in height some of the Egyp- 
 tian structures are greater. It must also be 
 said that while the Egyptian monuments were 
 built of natural stone, this thmg of little honor, 
 
 185 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 as oui* unpoetic friend would describe it, was 
 built of mud. That is to say, it wasjbuilt of 
 sun-dried brieks, the junctures of which can 
 still be seen, and was faced with stone and 
 plaster which have either crumbled away or 
 been removed. Its form, however, must have 
 been at one time strikingly like the Egyptian, 
 though truncated. This teocalli of Cholula 
 is not the best preserved in Mexico. The 
 Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of 
 the Sun, the two principal ones at Teoti- 
 huacan, noticed on our first journey to the 
 capital, are more perfect specimens. But the 
 one at Cholula is more famous, and the vege- 
 table growth of a milder climate has made it 
 more beautiful. Its flat top, about an acre in 
 extent, and with a stone parapet all around, 
 is not so empty as theirs, but is surmounted 
 by a Spanish church which takes the place of 
 the once splendid temple, and with which 
 also the hand of time has been at work. Nor 
 is the spot without an added charm of pathos 
 to the imagination of most visitors, probably, 
 because of that valiant resistance and bloody 
 massacre which have been noted since the con- 
 quest. 
 
 . When I asked my guides and instructors 
 
 186 
 
A TOLTEC PYRAMID 
 
 who built the pyramid, they said, "Los Az- 
 tecas." Other authorities have disagreed, 
 thinking the pyramid older than Aztec occu- 
 pancy, and ascribing it to that gentler and 
 more civilized people, the Toltecs. Indeed, 
 faith in the general accuracy of my informants 
 was somewhat shaken at this point; for when 
 I asked who built Popocatepetl, they again 
 answered, "Los Aztecas." I tried to bring 
 them to a worthier notion of the old giant 
 towering in the distance, wrapped about just 
 then with the whiteness of two distinct cloud- 
 levels below, and above with his monk's cowl 
 of eternal whiteness. The attempt may have 
 been lost. They seemed to take my correc- 
 tion at once ;l]b,ut ready agreement is a finished 
 att with them, and I am not sure of their 
 thoughts. 
 
 On the summit of the mound one commands 
 a fine view of the country round about for 
 many miles, broken here and there by a moun- 
 tain and bounded at last by the crests that 
 make the limit of the valley. One does not 
 think it strange that here the ancient god of 
 agriculture bade his last farewell to Mexico. 
 Should he ever return — as some natives still 
 hope with well-nigh Hebrew fondness, seeing 
 
 187 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 that the Spaniards by no means brought him 
 on their arrival — should he ever come again 
 to this valley of Puebla, he will find that 
 meanwhile he has not been wholly without 
 devotees. Rude enough is their devotion; but 
 Heaven seems to acknowledge it with har- 
 vests. 
 
 Cortez declared that from this eminence he 
 counted four hundred pagan temples; and iL 
 is of record that as he destroyed them he set 
 the natives, however unwilling or little able, 
 to replace each by a building for Catholic 
 worship. It would seem that in this instance 
 Cortez may have told the truth, for churches 
 stand as close everywhere as lighthouses on a 
 rocky coast. If so many can be seen from one 
 point anywhere else in the world, it would be 
 interesting to know where. They lend them- 
 selves so to beauty in the landscape, and look 
 such perfect symbols of peace and simple 
 piety, that one is not willing to regard them 
 otherwise. One accuses oneself of ungrate- 
 fulness when the thought occurs that blood 
 was wrung from an unhappy people in the 
 demand for tribute to these sacred buildings 
 — a demand from whose impoverishing effect 
 they have never recovered. 
 
 188 
 
A TOLTEC PYRAMID 
 
 Having taken a farewell glance at the 
 panorama in the slanting light, there was 
 nothing to do but go my way. A native ran 
 after me, offering an arrow-head for sale and 
 declaring with great emphasis that it was 
 genuine. I assured him of my implicit belief, 
 and said that I had seen pecks of such curios 
 found in the Connecticut Valley. He turned 
 back in no ill humor, apparently less vexed 
 than amused. At the railway station, for I 
 confess I left by railway, we three friends 
 justly d;vided the now lighter burden of cen- 
 tavo%, ai-d said a cordial good night. I hoped 
 that tor once the dreaded aunt would be rea- 
 son? I>l«. 
 
 189 
 
XV 
 
 HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 EITHER Cholula or Amecameca around 
 to the west will serve as a way station 
 for one who means to climb Popoca- 
 tepetl. It happened that I went up on the 
 west side from Amecameca. This account of 
 my experience will lack the distinction of a 
 first ascent. The summit, though, two thou- 
 sand feet higher than the highest Alp, has 
 been scaled many a time since a companion 
 of Fernando Cortez braved its then unprece- 
 dented height. The yawning mouth of the 
 drowsy volcanic monster, which we entered, 
 has become a place of industry for human 
 pygmies like ourselves; the sulphur that it 
 spits out as A'^enom is an article of commerce; 
 and stolid Indians, going every day to bring 
 this down, think the ascent as commonplace 
 as any other hard day's toil. Yet if you ever 
 make it you will probably not do so with in- 
 difference. ;^i^teen thousand feet above the 
 sea, ten thousand feet above the surrounding 
 
 190 
 
HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 plain, and shaped for all the world like the 
 erown of ahigh sombrero, with snow covering 
 all above the top of the broad band, the 
 "smoking mountain" will never be lightly ap- 
 proached by a sttanger, it is safe to say, un- 
 less the threatened railroad is built. Even 
 if limbs are good, and lungs are sound, and 
 heart proves equal to the strain, you will find 
 the task one to be reckoned with. 
 
 The first thing is to get on speaking terms 
 with the giant. "Popocatepetl" it is written, 
 but that is not enough to know. The natives 
 call it Popo'ca taypeftle, and, as has been 
 hinted, it means "smoking mountain." It be- 
 longs to the primitive tongue of the Indians 
 and has no more to do with Spanish, the lan- 
 guage of Mexico to-day, than old Welsh 
 names in Wales with the modern language of 
 Great Britain. If you cannot manage it in 
 its full bulk and weight, call it "Popo," as 
 tourists do. 
 
 A letter of introduction sent forward to the 
 ranch some five thousand feet above, brought 
 the overseer down at a smart jog with pony 
 and pistols. He foimd us all eating in a res- 
 taurant. The moment he appeared and ad- 
 dressed us in tolerable English, we knew that 
 
 191 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 if our troubles did not soon begin it would not 
 be his fault. Sufficiency was marked all over 
 him. He helped to find horses and guides, 
 fix prices, and arrange for supplies. The 
 typical Mexican ranchman, by the way, is a 
 gentleman, a born fighter, ambitious, patri- 
 otic, and resourceful. He will figure largely 
 as the animating spirit of any change that 
 may come, either by moral influence or by 
 force of arms. 
 
 Next morning, the women of the party hav- 
 ing spent the night packed away in a hotel 
 that was too small for them, and the men hav- 
 ing slept on the earth floor of the railway sta- 
 tion, our young ranchero with his odd cos- 
 tume, wiry figure, light air, and gay songs led 
 the way out of town, the guides trotting along 
 behind and occasionally making short cuts. 
 We' had several hours of travel thus, women 
 and men alike riding our beasts in the way 
 that nature intended. About four o'clock we 
 reached the shanty, whose hospitality we were 
 glad to find. Senor Perez, for our guide now 
 became our host, announced that here we were 
 to lodge. And indeed night already began to 
 settle upon that side of the mountain. Such 
 is the angle that the sun seemed scarcely to 
 
 192 
 
HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 have entered the western half of the sky be- 
 fore it hid itself. 
 
 We had seen the, mountain from the top of 
 the old Toltec pyramid of Cholula; we had 
 seen it through notches among the hills where 
 only goats and Mexican donkeys could keep 
 footing upon the trail; we had viewed it in 
 morning and in evening light from Chapul- 
 tepec and from the arches of Cuernavaca. 
 Some of us were to look down upon its great 
 surface from the rim at the top. But never 
 did it make the breath stop and the heart 
 grow sick with a feeling that could not be con- 
 trolled, as when we looked, straight up it 
 seemed, at the terrible cold height in the last 
 glow of that afternoon sun, and knew that 
 it did not hang over us more nearly than did 
 the adventure for its conquest on the morrow. 
 
 Nineteen of us, and Perez with a partner 
 and friend,, making twenty-one in all, slept as 
 best we could packed around one small room 
 with heads toward the many chinks in the wall 
 and with feet toward the center. The circle 
 was not complete; for at one corner was a 
 rough fireplace discharging most of its smoke 
 into the room. The chinks, though they ad- 
 mitted enough cutting blades of air, seemed 
 
 193 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 not to let much of the smoke escape. We lay- 
 in our clothes, of course, and in whatever 
 extra blankets we had, for at that height of 
 13,000 feet the air at night is cruel to one 
 who has spent months in the mild climate of 
 the plateau. Our shoes only we removed, as 
 no one wished to awake with swollen and 
 aching feet. 
 
 At three in the morning we rose, and at 
 five were started. Should any one be curious 
 as to how the two hours between had been 
 spent, some of our party could answer for the 
 employment of them. In the numbing, blis- 
 tering, altogether strange cold of that lofty 
 air, we had spent most of the time helping to 
 catch a stray horse, identifying horses and 
 saddles that each person as far as possible 
 might have his own of the day before, adjust- 
 ing girths that stiffened fingers refused to 
 manage, and calling down blessings on the 
 guides, no one of whom was more useful for 
 such matters than a sheep. On the whole 
 perhaps they were worth what they received; 
 each member of our party was to pay, for 
 horse and guide during three days, the sum of 
 eight dollars, Mexican money, or four dollars 
 in our own. 
 
 194. 
 
HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 Finally we mounted. Those of us who had 
 been martyrs for the rest were chattering with 
 cold. More than half had been sickened by 
 the smoke or some other cause. No one had 
 eaten much breakfast, as it is against all ad- 
 vice. Yet some, of course, were mcpfe cheer- 
 ful than others. Part of these were to be 
 among the first "quitters." 
 
 We rode our horses to the snow line, four- 
 teen thousand feet high in the month of Janu- 
 ary, and there left them. Some were almost 
 exhausted, so that they had been brought 
 along only by leading and coaxing. All suf- 
 fered from the cold, as they were accustomed 
 to the plains below. Persons who knew said 
 that going much beyond this point would be 
 fatal to them. 
 
 Henceforth it was to be real climbing. The 
 zigzag path was easy to follow with the eye, 
 but painfully hard for already lagging feet. 
 However, we kept along. I myself felt no 
 other distress than this sensation of labor and 
 a continued rebellion in my stomach. 
 
 After what seemed a very long time of our 
 starting and halting, the sun came up out of 
 the low country and showed itself. The angle 
 from us was as if we viewed a cartwheel from 
 
 195 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 a church steeple. Such a phenomenon in itself 
 would have been curious enough to pay for 
 some effort. But we were bent upon other 
 things, those who still held out, so we gave it 
 very brief attention. Adjusting our colored 
 glasses, for we had been warned against the 
 glare of a tropical sun upon the snow, we 
 thrust our sandals into the path and kept on. 
 
 By this time it was pure doggedness with 
 the best of us, and we had reached an altitude 
 of some sixteen thousand feet. As the snow 
 began to melt, the difficulty was increased. 
 Often our foothold gave way so that the des- 
 perate climbing of a full long minute was lost 
 by a single slip. The need of stopping to rest 
 became more and more frequent. One man, 
 indeed, a physician, about fifty years old, had 
 been obliged from the first to lie down every 
 few feet. Now he was far below most of us 
 and it seemed useless for him to think even of 
 reaching where we were. Yet he kept on. 
 
 When we were two-thirds of the way up 
 my nausea, which I had attributed to the 
 smoke, left me. The chief cause of this feel- 
 ing is doubtless inequality of pressure upon 
 the organs, and particularly failure of the 
 heart to adjust itself to lessened resistance 
 
 196 
 
HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 upon the arteries. One authority says that 
 bubbles form in the blood-vessels. With some 
 climbers mere weariness probably accounts 
 for more than they are aware. 
 
 Whatever had been the cause of my own 
 ills, they were all forgotten when the break in 
 the everlasting curve was actually seen; and 
 when we had won the battle I felt like a war- 
 horse. Others apparently were as much 
 elated, though some postal cards that we 
 wrote did prove rather shaky. 
 
 Most of us carried our own blankets, 
 barometers, and lunch-boxes all the way. 
 After mere "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" of general 
 admiration, we attended first to the lunch- 
 boxeS, and afterward to the barometer and 
 similar matters. 
 
 The crater of Popocatepetl is at the very 
 middle of the perfect dome. Its rim is un- 
 broken all around and is of nearly equal 
 height, though the side at which we looked 
 over is a little lower than the other. It was 
 topped then by a smooth abrupt wall of hard 
 snow about six feet high. From side to side 
 it is fully six hundred yards — surprisingly 
 large. It is more than five hundred feet deep 
 and some two hundred yards wide at the bot- 
 
 197 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 torn, where there is a sulphur lake. The color 
 of this is green — not greenish like sea water, 
 but green. 
 
 At several points in the side of the old 
 crater are little holes as large as a man's 
 wrist, from which sulphur smoke issues with 
 an unpleasant hissing noise. All the sides of 
 the crater are decidedly warm, though not too 
 hot to touch. We went down some little dis- 
 tance. We measured, guessed, commented, 
 gazed, and wondered. 
 
 Then we started toward the world again. 
 When we were ten minutes downward, which 
 would mean a good hour's distance in the op- 
 posite direction, we met Perez with the doctor 
 and a school teacher in tow. He afterward 
 succeeded in landing them at the top, though 
 not within the hour. 
 
 Thus far scenic effects have hardly been 
 mentioned. During the grim effort to get 
 up we took little notice of them, beyond mar- 
 veling at the sunrise so far below us. When 
 at the summit, we could see less than must at 
 times be possible, for there were cloud masses 
 lower down. The impression of distance is 
 not so great as on one New England moun- 
 tain of local celebrity which rises a thousand 
 
 198 
 
HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 feet above its surroundings. From such a 
 petty height every distance and bulk is appre- 
 ciated, and level fields seem to be very far be- 
 low. They are not too far to seem far. But 
 from old Popo the eye cannot measure by 
 anything. Everything is gigantic and in 
 equality of proportion, for the things below 
 which are not gigantic are lost altogether. 
 Yet the clouds and the snow, and the colors 
 upon both, and the shapes of mountains, and 
 the blue of the upper sky (for there is a 
 lower sky also, to one who climbs) — all this 
 gives a feeling not easily to be described nor 
 soon forgotten. Two other snow-capped 
 mountains stood in view above the vapors: 
 Orizaba, a few feet higher than Popo, and 
 Ixtaccihuatl, not quite so high. The valleys 
 were so full of dense, perfectly white and 
 level-lying clouds that it seemed every time 
 we looked as if we could sit upon a straw mat 
 and slide down the snow, across the snowy 
 cloud reaches, and up the other side. 
 
 Most of the party did slide down on the 
 snow crust, but two of us were obliged to 
 walk for lack of a man with an iron-bound 
 stick to steer the craft. We walked when we 
 did not run or sprawl, the guides calling after 
 
 199 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 US, "Despacito" ("A teeny bit slow! ") at 
 every jump or slip. Their caution was wise, 
 no doubt, but we had lost all respect for them. 
 We brought on ourselves more local soreness 
 of muscles from this coming down than from 
 going up; but we enjoyed the descent and ar- 
 rived at the snow line soon after those who 
 slid. In another half-hour we were at the 
 shanty. 
 
 The only visible mementos of the ascent 
 that I took with me were my sandals, which 
 weeks afterward I threw away in despair for 
 the bad odor of the native-tanned leather, and 
 a small piece of sulphur, which I had the 
 pleasure of giving to Mr. William Jennings 
 Bryan next day in a railway train. For cir- 
 cumstantial evidence that our party did make 
 this journey, therefore, I can now point only 
 to the mountain itself. Any investigating 
 person will find that it stands there in actual- 
 ity, just as I have said. 
 
 Our goggles had not prevented some cases 
 of inflammation from the glare, and sunburn 
 is a mild word for what we suffered; but on 
 the whole the hardships and difficulties were 
 not so great as we had thought possible, for 
 they were all such that we got over thenjf 
 
 »00 
 
HIGHER THAN THE ALPS 
 
 Popocatepetl, smooth, even dome that it is, is 
 doubtless one of the easiest mountains on the 
 globe upon which to reach so great a height. 
 There are no glaciers, no treacherous ravines, 
 none of the special terrors that attend moun- 
 tain climbing elsewhere. One's trying experi- 
 ences are likely to arise for the most part 
 from within. However, he must be a hard- 
 ened climber indeed to whom the ascent would 
 appear commonplace. 
 
 SOI 
 
XVI 
 
 TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 
 
 IT would be Tesented by enthusiasts toi 
 each town if I should say that Morelia, to 
 the northeast of Mexico City, in the state 
 of Michoacan, and Guadalajara, three times 
 its size, in the state of Jalisco, look in any 
 way alike; that there are no diflFerences worth 
 noting between Guanajuato and Queretaro, 
 capitals of two neighboring states of the same 
 names to the north of the Federal District; 
 or that between Aguas Calientes and San 
 Luis Potosi, similarly related to two states in 
 the next tier northward, though still four hun- 
 dred miles from the border, one might be at a 
 loss to distinguish. There are differences in 
 setting, altitude, latitude, mean temperature, 
 numerical population, and chief industries. 
 Guadalajara has for sale its famous pottery, 
 and Aguas Calientes its even better known 
 Mexican drawn- work on linen. Guanajuato 
 has its mint and its mines which do add land- 
 
 g02 
 
TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 
 
 marks to the surrounding hillsides, its really 
 splendid theater, and its gruesome catacombs. 
 In Queretaro they will show you a chapel on 
 the site of Maximilian's execution, and the 
 church of Santa Rosa which claimed the en- 
 thusiastic praise of Charles Dudley Warner 
 for its unsurpassed wood carving, its wealth 
 of gold leaf decoration, and its beautiful 
 paintings. There are the features of local 
 pride and interest; but after all a description 
 of one town, as seen by a northerner, would 
 read very much like the description of an- 
 other. One tires of those worthies, Cortez 
 and Maximilian, after a time. If, as in the 
 Queretaro church, one learns that a superb 
 altar piece was burned, not from public neces- 
 sity, as Juarez ordered many things de- 
 stroyed, but by the French in mere greed and 
 wantonness, one's flagging interest revives. 
 It is always stimulating to have something 
 that one can resent. 
 
 ' On the whole, even the tourist is likely to 
 imbibe something of the quiescent mood of 
 the country. It is not inherent and peculiar 
 to Mexicans; the animals have it. Though 
 very little of a horseman, I have ridden young 
 stallions in Mexico as unhesitatingly as I 
 
 203 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 would ride old Dobbin on the New England 
 farm, and with as little danger. I have gone 
 through yards full of mules, and suffered no 
 harm. They clatter in strings along the high- 
 ways without a strap except the girth of the 
 pack saddle, and driven by one small boy for 
 a dozen or twenty mules. I never saw one 
 show signs of viciousness. One will kick, 
 naturally, if he gets his leg over a chain trace. 
 Bulls are driven along the roads by children; 
 at different times, on foot or on horseback, I 
 have passed scores and they always gave me 
 the road. The explanation I have never 
 heard. One man says it is in the breeding; 
 but why should breeding have happened to 
 affect them all so — ^horses, mules, cattle? An- 
 other asserts that it is in the fodder — one feed- 
 ing a day of barley and barley straw will not 
 make an animal very spirited, he says. But 
 on this same fodder the animals show remark- 
 able strength and endurance and keep in con- 
 dition if otherwise well treated. Neither do 
 they show absence of life in its harmless 
 demonstrations. The peculiarity is not due to 
 uniformly humane treatment I can vouch, nor 
 can animals be cowed by any crueler treat- 
 ment there than some receive in the United 
 
 204 
 
TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 
 
 States. Rattlesnakes around Lake Chapala 
 almost never bite. It must be "the Mexican 
 habit," which, contrary to the usual idea, is 
 non-aggressive. The tourist gets it, and be- 
 comes willing to sit in the central park of any 
 typical Mexican town — ^the park is always 
 there — and let life pass by for his delectation 
 or enlightenment. This experience is about 
 the same in any of the places mentioned. 
 
 There is a town, Pachuca, that deserves 
 special description as unique. It has a park, 
 but it has an almost perpetual cold wind, and 
 frequent storms that make sitting in the park 
 an uneasy enjoyment. It is in the bottom of 
 a cup, with only one low side, toward Mexico 
 City, from which three railroads come out the 
 sixty miles and terminate. Down the sides of 
 this cup, in the rainy season, the water rushes 
 till the streets, flooded from all sides, become 
 rivers. Through a little gap in the high wall 
 the northern winds drive with violence. In 
 the dry season only a few years ago men killed 
 each other quarreling over a bucketful of 
 water. Now the water of a beautiful moun- 
 tain lake has been piped into town and the 
 poor who cannot have it in their houses may 
 draw it from public hydrants, except when 
 
 205 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 the Governor has diverted too much to his 
 private fields and gardens. Still, in the dry 
 season there is cause enough to look eagerly 
 for rains. Every wind bears clouds of blind- 
 ing and pestilential dust, and the whole sur- 
 rounding of the place is a desert. 
 
 In the rainy season, from May to Septem- 
 ber, visited with the other extreme, people 
 pray for the freshets to cease. Every morning 
 is an amethyst above and an emerald under 
 foot; but every afternoon the clouds blacken 
 and the floods come. Market women have 
 been drowned in the streets. 
 
 Forty thousand people live here, including 
 perhaps a hundred Americans and the rem- 
 nants of a colony of Cornish miners — tin 
 miners they were in Cornwall^ — who lived here 
 for thirty or forty years. One by one the 
 Cornish families are going back home now to 
 live henceforth on what Mexico has bestowed. 
 And what makes the place? Silver. Silver 
 and pulque. The only crop grown with any 
 large success in the immediate neighborhood 
 is the maguey, from which the national intoxi- 
 cant is made. One English millionaire owes a 
 large part of his fortune to his activity in 
 pulque, and there are several members of his 
 
 206 
 
v^^ 
 
 TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 
 
 family personally the worse for too much use 
 of it. Maguey was grown by the Indians be- 
 fore the ^Spaniards came, but silver is the 
 chief local interest. There are about three 
 hundred mines in the vicinity and some of 
 them have been worked since early in the six- 
 teenth century, till the output must be esti- 
 mated in billions of doUars. The claim marks, 
 the piles of tepetate (refuse), the yawning 
 mouths of tunnels, and the curious mine build- 
 ings lend variety to the precipitous hillsides. 
 Thejsilver that they yielded, until a few years 
 ago, went the sixty miles to Mexico by stage 
 or mule train. As late as 1901 there was no 
 bank, and paper money was unfamiliar, The 
 Mexican -silver dollar, the peso, then worth 
 about forty-three cents, was almost the only 
 familiar unit of value, and a man who had a 
 month's salary about him, unless poorly paid, 
 was grievously burdened. It was no uncom- 
 mon sight to see a servant accompanying 
 some one on his way to a business appoint- 
 ment literally staggering under a load of dol- 
 lars. It is not quite true to say that this dol- 
 lar was or is the only familiar unit. It is the 
 official unit, the unit in business. But the 
 market women cannot reckon in pesos nor in 
 
 207 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 centavos. They hold by the old Spanish 
 scheme of real (shilling), half -reaZ, and quar- 
 tev-real, which runs into fractions. This, 
 however, little irks them, for they sell only a 
 real's or a cuartillo's worth at a time. If you 
 want five times the amount, you repeat the 
 transaction five times. It is forbidden to buy 
 or sell merchandise by any but the metric 
 units or to reckon money by other than the 
 decimal system. A weighing scale cannot be 
 imported unless with whatever other markings 
 it may have it bears the metric scheme of 
 grammes, kilogrammes, etc. In the markets 
 the law is relaxed, seeing that it is hard for 
 the common people to change, but in shops it 
 is usually enforced. An inspector of weights 
 and measures was in a small drygoods place 
 when a boy asked for a vara (about a yard) 
 of cloth. "We sell it by the meter, thirty 
 centavos" said the proprietor. "But I don't 
 know meter" protested the boy; "how much 
 would a Vara be?" "Well, a vara would be 
 about twenty-five centavos" vouchsafed the 
 man. The boy asked for a vara, paid twenty- 
 five centavos, and went out. "You are fined," 
 said the inspector, "for selling cloth by the 
 vara" "How much am I fined?" asked the 
 
 208 
 
TOWNS AND MORE TOWNS 
 
 shopkeeper. "Twenty reales" pronounced 
 the inspector, half severely, half indulgently. 
 "But you have imposed my fine in reales" ex- 
 claimed the shopkeeper, "and therefore you 
 also are fined." Both men laughed, neither 
 fine was paid, and the inspector afterward 
 told me the story on himself. 
 
 g09 
 
XVII 
 
 A RIDE TO REGLA 
 
 AT ten one morning, though six would 
 have been a better time, we left Pa- 
 chuca on two hired horses, bound for 
 Regla. An hour's riding over the famous 
 road to Real del Monte, along which many a 
 fabulous fortune of silver has gone by mule- 
 cart and whose sharp turns have witnessed 
 many a bold bandit adventure, then a short 
 canter across a flat, and we came to "the 
 Real." 
 
 A little way back we had seen a man wear- 
 ing a blanket that we coveted for its rich 
 colors and its characteristic Mexican design. 
 Now, as we dismounted, he was coming into 
 sight, and I went to greet him, with some com- 
 pliments regarding the blanket. He was 
 soon prompted to offer it for ten pesos (five 
 dollars) and to explain how an old woman 
 among the mountains of Puebla had woven it 
 for him. For eight pesos, after some argu- 
 
 aio 
 
A RIDE TO REGLA 
 
 ment, the blanket was bought. It was well 
 bundled and well wrapped, as its condition 
 required, but we were sure that after thorough 
 washing it would come out as beautiful as an 
 Oriental rug, nor were we to be disappointed. 
 Perhaps we ought to have paid the ten pesos, 
 but we were not clear about it and there was 
 no one to arbitrate. 
 
 Having greeted the native Protestant pas- 
 tor and his wife, we went up the street a few 
 doors to take dinner with "Aunt Mary," a 
 good soul whose title of affection had become 
 so familiar among English and American 
 niiners for fifty miles around that she was 
 scarcely known, even at the post office, by any 
 other name, and all the shopkeepers had 
 learned to call her by the Spanish equivalent, 
 "la tia Maria." More than twenty years she 
 had remained in this place, ten thousand feet 
 high, where husband and brothers, miners all, 
 had lost their lives, and where she was soon 
 to end her own, though we did not know that 
 the present meal was the last we should have 
 with her. So, here and there, no doubt there 
 are many solitary foreign women who stay to 
 do good in a land where they have suffered. 
 
 The hottest two hours of the day being 
 gll 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 over, we took leave of "Aunt Mary," made 
 our little contribution toward the charities 
 that she was dispensing every day from slen- 
 der means, and joined the friendly minister, 
 who was going toward Regla as far as Ve- 
 lasco. Pleasant chatting carried us through 
 Omitlan to his destination, a little farm vil- 
 lage among the mountains. 
 
 Cornish "pasties," strong tea, and saffron 
 cake full of plums, all pressed upon us by the 
 bountiful "tia Maria" at noontime, now in- 
 clined us more to repose than to exertion. 
 Rain, also, be^an to threaten, and we hesi- 
 tated. Soon, however, we were to leave the 
 republic, and Regla, so long heard about, 
 might remain by us forever unvisited. So 
 we kept on through San Antonio, turning to 
 the right from that hamlet to an interesting 
 and beautiful blue lake, the Ojo de Agua. 
 We retraced to San Antonio and took the op- 
 posite direction to Regla, arriving there at a 
 quarter before five o'clock. 
 
 When we reached the gate of an old haci- 
 enda it was with half a feeling of distrust that 
 we entered, being told that so we could best 
 see the noted falls. Inside and at the left of 
 the entrance is a venerable chapel. At the 
 
 gl2 
 
A RIDE TO REGLA 
 
 right of the entrance is an exceedingly quaint 
 garden with steps leading up to a quainter 
 balcony, which runs along the side of a great 
 nondescript building and terminates in some- 
 thing like a conservatory. Clearly there are 
 living apartments beyond that, and pleasant 
 they must be. From the office a courteous 
 Spanish-looking young man came out, invited 
 us to dismount, and told us that we could 
 reach the falls only by walking. He fur- 
 nished us a guide with keys and we started 
 along a way which presently became a tunnel, 
 then an arched and vaulted succession of 
 underground chambers where smelting ap- 
 pears to have been done, then, emerging 
 again after we had despaired of it, opened 
 into a path along the edge of a ravine. Our 
 guide told us naively that the subterranean 
 passage was haunted, but that he himself had 
 never seen anything ghostly. He assured us, 
 however, that it is "una cosa muy espantosa" 
 (a very frightful thing) . 
 
 Moving along the ravine, we came at last 
 to a sight of two high natural walls, approach- 
 ing each other at an angle; and gurgling and 
 plunging down between them at their point 
 of greatest nearness, a waterfall. This, though 
 
 213 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 not wonderful in size or height, is ft joyful 
 thing to look at, and would in itself have re- 
 paid us for the journey. What attracted our 
 attention most was the columns that form 
 the two rocky converging walls. They are 
 nearly perfect hexagonal prisms, basaltic in 
 the popular sense, whether or not in the 
 mineralogist's definition, and about three and 
 one-half feet in diameter. Their height was 
 not easy to determine, but I judged it to be 
 some hundred and fifty feet. Most remark- 
 able, I think, is a broken formation by which 
 at one place not the sides but the smooth ends 
 of the prisms are exposed to view, though con- 
 siderably inclined upward. To the right and 
 left of these are columns that stand erect, and 
 above them are short stumps that are also per- 
 fectly upright. 
 
 The hacienda, church, and connected dwell- 
 ings were built about a hundred years ago 
 by t|ie famous Count of Regla. The cost of 
 construction may^ have been millions or dol- 
 lars. Hours would be well spent in exploring 
 the place, for which we had only minutes. This 
 , Count of -Regla was the rich man who en- 
 dowed the National Pawn Shop of Mexico. 
 Be it"wa3„whq lent the Spanish crown a mil- 
 
 214. 
 
A RIDE TO REGLA 
 
 lion pesos and offered if the king would visit 
 him to pave the coach road with silver for his 
 coming. 
 
 Again on horseback, having given our 
 thanks to the Spanish-looking young man and 
 our peseta to the guide, we started homeward. 
 
 The country from Regla to Omitlan is as 
 imlike the barren Pachuca plain and hillsides 
 as could well be. Cattle are grazing, crops 
 are growing luxuriantly, the road has a con- 
 sistency of genuine earth under foot, and there 
 is green everywhere. The peasants' huts are 
 cleaner and much more comfortable, the 
 simple costumes of carriers and donkey driv- 
 ers give signs of acquaintance with water, 
 here and there are little shady groves where 
 rabbits skip; and all is a picture of simple, 
 rural prosperity. Velasco and Omitlan, but 
 for the Indian blankets and wide hats and the 
 low style of buildings, are like contented, hill- 
 surrounded farm villages at home. 
 
 One slope as we came along startled us by 
 what seemed to be multitudes of glaring 
 lights. They proved to be the points of a 
 thousand maguey plants, wet with a little 
 shower that was all the outcome of earlier 
 cloudy threatenings, and now all aglow with 
 
 215 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 red reflection from the setting sun. I had 
 seen windows lighted up so, but never any- 
 thing in nature. The flash of a thousand 
 polished spears could not have been more 
 brilliant. 
 
 A maguey field has other beautiful phases. 
 One that I must mention belongs not to the 
 cultivated field but to the native growth on 
 many a hillside. It occurs when a sprout 
 twenty to thirty feet high has shot up from 
 the heart of each mature plant and burst into 
 wonderful bloom, when the morning damp is 
 on them all, and when thousands of humming- 
 birds of different varieties, like small animate 
 jewels, dart to and fro among them. The 
 field that we were now passing was, of course, 
 not under cultivation for beauty; and its yield 
 would be taken before it could ever blossom. 
 
 Still later, for night was approaching, we 
 looked through the notch in the mountains be- 
 yond which we knew was Real del Monte, and 
 saw framed between their dark masses that 
 beautiful constellation, the Southern Cross, 
 which has an additional charm for the fancy 
 because from our latitude at home it is never 
 seen. This cluster of beacons was before us 
 continually as we galloped along the shadowy 
 
 216 
 
A RIDE TO REGLA 
 
 roads for an hour, finally slacking rein and 
 breath within a few moments' ride of "the 
 Real." On Saturday night there is just 
 enough chance of slightly unpleasant encoun- 
 ters to make a spice in the after recollection. 
 Twenty years ago all this neighborhood was 
 thoroughly infested by bandits. Babes have 
 grown to manhood in the villages since then, 
 however, without knowing any worse fear 
 than of some drunken miner who might give 
 trouble. True, this argues that the hand of 
 Diaz at his prime was steady and strong; but 
 it argues more than that. It is proof that the 
 rank and file of Mexican citizens in places 
 like this desire order and quiet, and given 
 proper firmness in controlling the few unruly 
 spirits that always appear in a mining coun- 
 try, they will live together as peacefully as 
 good citizens anywhere. 
 
 A little before eight o'clock we were again 
 with our friends in their pretty flower-hidden 
 parsonage, where we were to spend the night. 
 
 An incident of one trip to Real del Monte 
 has always returned to me with peculiar 
 pathos. On a high hill overlooking "The 
 Real," where it can be seen for miles around, 
 is the cemetery of the English people of Pa- 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 chuca and Real del Monte, enclosed by a white 
 wall. It has been there now for more than a 
 generation, and there are graves enough to 
 keep each other company. I happened along 
 as a child's funeral was approaching and 
 waited to attend. From the foot of the hill 
 the coffin is always carried up by two sets of 
 bearers, alternating as often as they need. No 
 hired person ever touches a shovel to a grave. 
 All such labor is performed by friends and 
 neighbors, which is peculiarly significant in 
 this country where no white man does manual 
 work. On this particular occasion all the 
 children of the colony, between fifty and a 
 hundred, attended, dressed in black and white 
 and carrying wreaths. While no lover of 
 funerals, I have remembered this one as sig- 
 nifying the group unity of fellow-countrymen 
 in a strange land. I felt as if something al- 
 most traitorous were being done when last 
 spring, ten years later, I found all the pros- 
 perous families of the colony going home. A 
 rather melancholy fact for the less prosperous 
 who remain ! They will become identified with 
 the new American colony that is growing up, 
 and as a consoling tie some of their former 
 neighbors will still be represented by sons and 
 
 ^18 
 
A RIDE TO REGLA 
 
 daughters to whom England is not home, 
 and who, though jealously claiming citizen- 
 ship as Britons, find that they cannot be 
 happy away from the land of their birth. 
 Strange ramifications of interest and senti- 
 ment indeed, come of life in a foreign 
 country. 
 
 219 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 f "T^WO young friends of mine who were 
 J[_ going from eastern New York to Mex- 
 ico thought California so little out of 
 their way that they would be foolish not to 
 include it in their journey, which they did. 
 They got a check cashed in San Francisco and 
 made a new beginning; a railway ticket to 
 Mexico City costs more from San Francisco 
 than from Toronto. To infer that Mexico 
 has a long coast line on the west will not be 
 going astray. Those who are fresh from 
 school geography will disdain the weakness of 
 mere inference here; and you may feel about 
 equally superior if you have lately referred 
 to a map. My friends were describing almost 
 an equilateral triangle, so that after three 
 thousand miles of travel they found them- 
 selves little nearer their destination than 
 before. 
 Maps and other sources of indirect knowl- 
 230 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 edge are likely to play a larger part in our 
 acquaintance with the rest of the republic. 
 Whoever has gone over as much ground as 
 we have now covered and does not find his 
 allotted time well toward its end, is no mere 
 winter tourist. He may be the prospective 
 author of some first-hand studies among the 
 aborigines of "Unloiown Mexico," or of inves- 
 tigations concerning the economic and social 
 conditions which have lately been character- 
 ized under the strong phrase, "Barbarous 
 Mexico," or of learned disquisitions on fauna 
 and fiora, on geology, or archgeology, or what 
 not. He may be an intending settler, a pros- '' 
 pector or a dawdler. Whatever he is, he may 
 be well enough in his way; but to the brisk 
 and somewhat careless traveler he is of course 
 no companion. 
 
 Toward home then we shall be gradually 
 making our way, alert for any thought of 
 somebody else that may help us to generalize, 
 sympathetic and intelligent now toward many 
 things that a little while back we dismissed 
 simply as barbarous, by an insidious process 
 turned students of prosaic books of reference 
 during odd hours upon train or in hotel, find- 
 ing nothing dull which broadens our acquaint- 
 
 221 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 ance with this country of our travel. It has 
 become the way of the three months' visitor 
 "to love that well which he must leave ere 
 long." 
 
 Western Mexico has two beautiful lakes 
 which might have been named along with the 
 cities of Morelia and Guanajuato some time 
 ago. One is Pat^^ciuaEO. dutifully described 
 by almost every writer because ..of -±he paint- 
 ing of the Descent from the Cross at Tzin- 
 tzuntzan attributed to Titian, Cabrera, Ibarra, 
 and other great or lesser artists. The second 
 lake , Chapala , is the largest in Mexico and 
 the most pop ular for vacations. Both lakes 
 are full of fish and haunted by game and song 
 birds. Both are high and have a delightful 
 climate. 
 
 Among the sierras of the west live tribes of 
 Indians acknowledging no allegiance to the 
 Mexican government, little touched by any re- 
 ligion except that of their forefathers, little 
 altered in customs or life by contact with 
 white men, and thousands of them unable to 
 speak Spanish. They differ markedly in type, 
 one tribe from another, there being one pop- 
 ularly called Chinos by the Mexicans because 
 of their Mongplian appearance. 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 The map and the guide-book — for we must 
 resume our journey — -will tell us that even 
 more than our own country, Mexico has been 
 slow to develop along its western slope. _Aeas- 
 j)ul co, some three hundred miles north of 
 Salina Cruz, has a harbor generally conceded 
 to be the best natural port in America, and 
 one of the finest in the world, offering without 
 man's effort advantages for which substitutes 
 have been so costly at Vera Cruz and Tam- 
 pico. Acapulco is completely land-locked, 
 with high protecting hills, and amid charac- 
 teristic tropical scenery. Some dredging is 
 needed to make it of use for the largest steam- 
 ers. Here the galleons of the old Spanish trad- 
 ers used to put in, and the buccaneers that 
 pursued them. Fortifications were built in 
 the seventeenth century, and for more than a 
 hundred years this was the entry port for all 
 the trafiic of Spain, not only with her Philip- 
 pine possessions, but also with India. Cargoes 
 were unloaded, packed across the isthmus 
 about four hundred miles to Vera Cruz, and 
 reshipped. But of latejjport^ without a rail- 
 road could notj3ourish, so Acapulco has not 
 greatly prospered. The Cuernavaca division 
 of the Mexican Railway is being extended, 
 
 223 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 and when it reaches the coast Acapulco will 
 assume importance. Manzani llo, already hav- 
 ing railway connections over the "Central" by 
 way of Guadalajara, but lacking complete 
 harbor protection as yet, is another port des- 
 tined to grow. San Bias, yet a little to the 
 north, then Mazktlan, and last, halfway up 
 the east side of the Gulf of California, Guay- 
 mas, make a succession of harbors most of 
 wffich are too shallow for large vessels, but all 
 such as can be deepened, all well protected, 
 or capable of being made so, all extremely 
 beautiful. Absence of railroad facilities, 
 which are just now being provided, has left 
 undisturbed in these towns a great deal that 
 is quaint, while being on the coast, they have 
 slowly gathered strange accretions of life 
 from every quarter of the globe. You may 
 sit in the plaza and study them. There are 
 more various breeds of people than in the in- 
 terior and more variously mixed. Over there 
 is a Chinaman with the bundle of linen that 
 seems the attribute of a Chinaman the world 
 over; and those girls just beyond moving 
 along with a gait that is half glide and half 
 waddle might be his daughters. They are 
 more probably the daughters of some Chinese 
 
 224. 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 shopkeeper who plainly has a Mexican (In- 
 dian) wife. Of complexion they have rather 
 more than either of their parents are likely to 
 have had — a decided pink with a waxy cream 
 color. You do not know after looking twice 
 whether to call them pretty or repellent; but 
 they look clean, healthy, and satisfied with 
 life. 
 
 The negroes that pass now and then do not 
 differ much in appearance from those to be 
 seen in the Carolinas, though most of them, if 
 you listen, are talking Spanish. 
 
 This mother with three children is a mon- 
 grel-looking female — one may say it with 
 slight shame and not unkindly since no other 
 phrase describes a jaded creature in whom the 
 Aztec, the African, and the Iberian are all 
 mingled, and if not badly mingled have still 
 not fortified her to make more than sad, per- 
 severing battle with life and frequent mater- 
 nity. But do you notice how immaculate are 
 the starched clothes of the three children and 
 how almost pathetically clean her own cheap 
 garments? Have you any notion how much 
 work is involved to make the integuments of 
 four as clean as that? Your laundry bills 
 may at times have given you a hint that did 
 
 225 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 not belittle it. And this woman has either 
 devoted such an amount of work for to-day's 
 outing or paid some one yet poorer to do it. 
 Smile if you will as she sends one of her prog- 
 eny back to the dulce man with a goody that 
 he has already begun to enjoy, but which she 
 fears is not wholesome, and the dulce man, 
 with the universal complacency of the land, 
 submits to an exchange. So you might smile 
 if you could witness the housekeeping of this 
 mother of a family. More scrubbing will be 
 done in a week than we might think necessary 
 for a month ; but the tolerance of all kinds of 
 filth within arm's length of the door, unless 
 some public authority looks after it, is a thing 
 to admire. She is cleanly, but she does not 
 know what sanitation means. She has a crav- 
 ing for. beauty, as the personal bedeckments 
 of the family attest; but she has neither cul- 
 tured tastes nor the unspoiled instinct for 
 simplicity of some of her ancestors. She has 
 a spark of aspiration after various things if 
 only her aspiration were well directed and she 
 were not so fragile a piece of yellow clay. 
 
 That peon on the other side of the walk is 
 borrachoj which being interpreted means 
 drunk — very drunk. The well meaning 
 
 226 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 young fellow of his own class who shakes him 
 and is greeted with a muddled but emphatic 
 protest, wishes to save him if possible from 
 being helped away by a policeman. "You 
 don't want a trip to the Voile Nacional, do 
 you?" he inquires in answer to the protest; 
 and the name has a sobering effect. Unless 
 you have been reading books you will not 
 know what the Valle Nacional is; but the 
 horracho has an idea. The name is burned in 
 on his mind so that even an excess of pulque 
 or other drink does not wholly obliterate it. 
 It is the place, so he believes, where a fellow 
 arrested for being disorderly may find him- 
 self consigned to help raise some of the best 
 tobacco in the world, under such climate and 
 conditions that he will not last for more than 
 one crop. The poor people have their bug- 
 aboos, many of which are unsubstantial, and 
 Valle National is one of them. The army is 
 another, and the army has shown itself de- 
 cidedly unsubstantial on occasions. Why not, 
 if composed of men to whom it was a bug- 
 aboo until it became an unwelcome reality? 
 
 This woman with the powder so thick on her 
 face and the ludicrous grandee air is the wife 
 of some small merchant of European or 
 
 227 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 mixed blood, and the young Indian girl, so 
 much superior to her in physique, in comeli- 
 ness, and in apparent interest in life, is her 
 servant. 
 
 On paper, that is in books planned so as 
 not to need revision for two or three years, 
 railroad connection is complete from Guana- 
 juato all the way up the coast through the 
 ports and beyond to Nogales, Arizona. In 
 fact there are gaps as yet in the southern part. 
 For the immediate present the tourist will 
 choose a route farther eastward. There are 
 three principal routes from the capital to the 
 United States: one by Zacatecas, Torreon, 
 and Chihuahua to El Paso, Texas; one turn- 
 ing a little eastward at Torreon to Eagle 
 Pass, Texas; and one still farther to the east 
 by way of Monterey, entering the United 
 States at Laredo, Texas. Each of the Amer- 
 ican border cities has its neighboring Mexican 
 town just over the line: for Nogales, Arizona, 
 Nogales in Sonora; for El Paso, Texas, 
 Juarez in Chihuahua; for Eagle Pass, Texas, 
 Ciudad Porfirio Diaz in Coahuila; for La- 
 redo, Texas, Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas. 
 
 Mention ought to be made of Durango, a 
 fine city of 40,000 inhabitants, which is 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 reached by a side trip of six to seven hours 
 southwestward from Torreon, which with an 
 altitude of six thousand feet has a delightftJ 
 climate, and about which is an interesting 
 region but little developed* The country is 
 mountainous and full of mineral deposits. 
 Fish and game abound. 
 
 Zacatecas, hidden in a ravine between sil- 
 ver-bearing mountains, has a population of 
 thirty-five thousand and is noted for mining, 
 for churches, and for nearness to some inter- 
 esting ruins. La Quemada. The climate is not 
 one. of the attractions though the scenery has 
 a barren beauty. A trip to a mine is some- 
 times made part of a visit here. My. own ac- 
 quaintance with silver mines happens to have 
 been made at another famous camp, but essen- 
 tials would not differ. A tram car drawn by 
 mules is the most likely conveyance from 
 town. Stone or plastered and whitewashed 
 monuments on the hillside indicate the bound- 
 aries of the "claim." When the actual build- 
 ings are reached, the departments working 
 above groimd are too numerous to mention — 
 offices, assaying rooms, sorting, grinding, 
 washing, packing rooms, blacksmithing and 
 repair shops, smelters, etc. Many cripples 
 
 g29 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of the industry find employment in these su- 
 perterranean departments. The man who 
 drives nails in that "skip" is blind of one eye, 
 the man who turns the wheel over there at the 
 bellows is totally blindy and yonder you may 
 notice a poor fellow standing on a wooden 
 prop which serves as a leg. These are natives. 
 But here comes a young Englishman from 
 the chief office who lost his arm only six 
 months ago through some mishandling or im- 
 perfection of a machine. You have bespoken 
 a pleasure about as grim as visiting the forge 
 of Hephsestus. Along with the blind and the 
 cripples, you look every moment for dwarfs 
 and giants. Now enter through the long tun- 
 nel where you see the little flat cars issuing 
 drawn by mules, and keep close to your guide. 
 The walls of the tunnel are part masonry, 
 part natural rock. When you reach the far 
 end of this nearly horizontal tunnel, you are 
 already far under a hill. The elevator or 
 "cage" will take you up the shaft to the sur- 
 face, or down to lower and lower levels. No- 
 tice the great pumping engine lifting thou- 
 sands of gallons of gray mine water per min- 
 ute, night and day, and always under careful 
 watch, to keep the whole enterprise from be- 
 
 230 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 ing submerged. In some places you would 
 still find only bull hides, roughly sewed and 
 used as buckets, strings of them being hauled 
 to the surface; but you are visiting a some- 
 what modernized establishment. There are 
 sixteen different levels, one below the other, 
 to which you may plunge in this cage of yours, 
 till your technical friend tells you you are 
 only a petty two or three thousand feet above 
 sea level and your sensations tell you that 
 hell cannot be far below. Along every level 
 run narrow shafts, broadened wherever rich 
 ore has appeared in quantity. Along every 
 shaft crouch men and little children, half 
 naked, under their dripping loads. Over each 
 group of Indian laborers is a Mexican, an 
 English, or quite possibly an American boss, 
 his lamp, a candle, stuck upon his hat with 
 soft clay. He himself does no work except 
 in emergency — ^no white man in Mexico above 
 or below ground does manual work — ^but even 
 so his position does not provoke envy. Heat, 
 blackness of thick darkness, strange half- 
 muffled, reverberant sounds, a sense of pres- 
 sure in the ears and of deadly weight upon the 
 lungs, a saturating drip, drip at every turn, 
 and confused glimpses now and then of 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 human figures at toil — this is about all that 
 the casual visitor to a mine can record. Above 
 ground again you may watch to see how the 
 workers emerge and will observe them riding 
 upon an open "skip" — ^not a "cage" this time 
 • — some standing upon the low edge and reach- 
 ing over to cling to the rope by which the car 
 is hoisted. Deaths, you are told, are only 
 moderately numerous, the greatest numbers 
 being on Mondays or following feast days 
 when pulque has been imbibed. The Mexi- 
 can laborer is not lazy on a work day, but if 
 free to do so he will observe all the festivals 
 and memorials, for he is a creature of custom. 
 The mules that you see mixing the great torta 
 (cake) of amalgam out there are not crea- 
 tures of custom and do not observe holidays 
 nor die with incontinent suddenness ; but they 
 have shockingly sore legs from the effect of 
 vitriol in the mixture. They are relieved, 
 when too much affected, and used by way of 
 change to turn the great rolling stone that 
 grinds the ore. You may console yourself 
 that modem stamp mills are displacing this 
 invention of 1557 as well as some of the uses 
 of human labor just shown you. And yet 
 there are to this day also mines where peon§ 
 
 g33 
 
THE WEST AND NORTH 
 
 toil to the surface upon notched tree trunks 
 for ladders, denied even the perilous aid of 
 the "skip." By means thus widely varying, 
 M exico leads the world as a source of silver, 
 with forty million dollars' worth annually, 
 stands well up in the list of gold-producing 
 countries, with twenty-four million dollars' 
 worth, is second to the United States in cop- 
 per production, with an annual yield of thir- 
 teen million dollars' worth, and is third for 
 ouiput of lead, though for this the figure 
 seems small — three and one-half million dol- 
 lars' worth. Silver, gold, copper, and lead 
 are very commonly found two or three to- 
 gether, a mine being operated for the pre- 
 dominant metal, while assays are made for the 
 others as by-products. The subject of min- 
 ing would repay further discussion if we were 
 either investigators or formal students. 
 
 Torreon, with a population of fourteen 
 thousand, has its chief distinction in being a 
 railway junction as already indicated. An 
 accident to our train made me acquainted 
 with it, and I found it a good deal American- 
 ized. Chihuahua is even more so, being nearer 
 the border, and is twice as large. Silver 
 smelters — for still we are in the region of 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 rich silver mines — iron foundries, and fac- 
 tories give it a modern air. Hidalgo, the 
 "Author of Mexican Liberty," was put to 
 death here in 1811. Though the city of Chi- 
 huahua is chiefly famous for the raising of a 
 useless and sickly kind of dog, it is the capital 
 of a state larger than Ohio and Pennsylvania 
 combined. This area is sparsely populated by 
 Tarahumare Indians, the best runners in the 
 world, and by miners and ranchmen, many of 
 whom are Americans. It is the old sister 
 state of Texas, and like it in having vast 
 regions devoted to cattle raising. Lumber- 
 ing and silver mining are also among the in- 
 dustries. 
 
 ^H 
 
XIX 
 
 TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 A WRITER in a religious weekly not 
 long ago spoke of the twentieth 
 century as being on one side of the 
 Rio Grande, and the sixteenth on the other. 
 No one would expect this altogether to be 
 the case, and yet one is constantly surprised 
 to find how far it is from being so. Monterey 
 is about as American a city as San Antonio, 
 and San Antonio lacks little of being as Mex- 
 ican as Monterey. The baggage man, the 
 customs agent, and lately, by reason of a de- 
 cree, the train conductor also are of quite dif- 
 ferent types on the two sides of the line; and 
 from these one might easily generalize. But 
 an article by Charles Moreau Harger in the 
 Outlook for January 25, 1911, apropos of the 
 admission to statehood of Arizona and New 
 Mexico, reveals that on the American side 
 from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, Cali- 
 fornia, the "twentieth century" is only 
 
TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 blended with the sixteenth. From the Gulf 
 to the Pacific, the quiet, non-official popula- 
 tion who have nothing to do with large affairs 
 but are so important in any prophecy regard- 
 ing the future character of a region, has a 
 considerable residue of the Mexican to whom 
 the whole southwest once belonged. He is 
 the "native," here as in Mexico itself. Forty- 
 one per cent, of the population of New Mex- 
 ico are Spanish American; there are 135,000 
 of them in this one state. How many more 
 are of mixed blood would be hard to guess, 
 but the number is certainly large. 
 
 The Mexican, as a rule, is without strong 
 national or racial antipathies. Says a friend 
 of mine who has studied the subject for years: 
 "They are the amalgamators of all races. 
 Large numbers of the poorer Mexicans are 
 coming to the United States now and by in- 
 termarriage will do much to solve the negro 
 problem and the Indian problem. What the 
 final race will be I cannot predict, but my ob- 
 servation makes me think it will be good. 
 There are at present about as many Mexicans 
 as there are American negroes in this south- 
 ern strip; and the amalgamation can be seen 
 all along the border, especially in San An- 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 lonio, Texas. There is a city by itself in San 
 Antonio where all the breeds may be studied 
 by any one who will take the trouble." As 
 well as the poor, some Mexican families of 
 means and culture have always remained in 
 the United States since the border was shifted 
 southward to include them. 
 
 On the other hand, the aggressive Amer- 
 ican is in evidence on the southern as well as 
 the northern side of the border, occupying 
 the positions in which initiative and the ability 
 to manage would naturally place him. Nor is 
 he the only modifying influence. "From all 
 these colonies in the United States Mexicans 
 and mixed bloods who have got a little Amer- 
 ican education are constantly going back to 
 Mexico along with the Americans who go 
 looking for land. The flow southward will 
 increase now that the free land in the United 
 States is nearly all taken. The Roosevelt 
 Dam and other projects, and the statehood of 
 Arizona and New Mexico, will hasten the 
 movement. The national line has little effect 
 to stop it." 
 
 In Torreon, you will remember my saying, 
 I experienced one of the delays that still oc- 
 cur from time to time on Mexican railroads, 
 
 237 
 
A MEXICAN .JOURNEY 
 
 or on our own, for that matter. I entered a 
 barber shop and asked to be shaved, putting 
 the request as well as I could in Spanish. 
 "Beg pardon, sir! What did you say?" was 
 the rather sharp response. "Oh, then you 
 speak English?" said I. "Yes," answered 
 the man, "and it's lucky, for I don't speak 
 anything else." 
 
 This man was an American, plying his 
 trade over two hundred miles from our bor- 
 der, yet without knowledge of any tongue but 
 our own; and the incident occurred ten years 
 ago. 
 
 There was a young Texan in our party 
 who was on his way homeward to repair ill 
 health, and who could not eat buffet rations. 
 I had tried repeatedly to get him some Amer- 
 ican crackers or English biscuits — quite sim- 
 ilar articles under a different name, — ^but the 
 Mexican shops that I entered could not 
 supply either. I asked my barber friend if 
 he could help me to what was wanted. "There 
 is an American grocer three or four doors be- 
 low," he replied. In this grocery, also, Eng- 
 lish was of course the language of trade, 
 though Spanish may have been used on occa- 
 sion. I found that one could do better with 
 
 238 
 
TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 good English than with lame Castilian in the 
 town generally. 
 
 In the "Pullman," which was to go ns far 
 as Mexico City, the capital and very heart of 
 the republic, I heard a party of Mexicans try- 
 ing to make their wants understood. "Oh, I 
 don't comprende what you quiere! " (don't 
 know what you want!) was the exclamation 
 of the negro porter. The number of Amer- 
 icans traveling by Mexican railroads is pro- 
 portionately larger than would be supposed, 
 if third-class passengers be left out of reckon- 
 ing. Particularly is this true in sleeping-cars. 
 So our porter had a not unaccountable feel- 
 ing that English was the language of his 
 realm, and that aliens ought to learn Enghsh 
 before coming in. The steward in the same 
 train called upon some passenger to interpret, 
 when he wished to buy watermelons of a 
 native. 
 
 All Pullman conductors in Mexico, so far 
 as I have ever observed, speak English. Most 
 of them are Americans, by birth or adoption. 
 It is true that they all speak Spanish. There 
 has lately been made a law that porters also 
 must know Spanish; but the need of such a 
 law explains itself. Fancy a law requiring 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 similar officials in the United States to know 
 English! 
 
 It is not surprising that English should 
 make some way southward over the boundary. 
 So does Spanish penetrate northward, for the 
 matter of that. But the exchange is not equal 
 in amoimt, as the Mexicans emigrate less and 
 travel less than we. There are several thou- 
 sand resident Americans in Mexico City 
 alone, to say nothing about the multitude of 
 tourists. If the linguistic movement south- 
 ward continues to be more than the counter 
 movement, plainly the line of contact will it- 
 self gradually be moved. There is hardly a 
 Mexican urchin selling fruit or papers along 
 the railroads within fifty miles of the Rio 
 Grande who does not know at least some 
 colloquial phrases of English. This becomes 
 less and less true, indeed, as one progresses 
 southward. But one is never surprised to be 
 asked by some russet - faced tatterdemalion, 
 "You want the paper?" "You want some 
 fruit?" and — this is a parenthesis — English 
 reappears more prominently than ever at the 
 capital. Ask a Mexico City policeman in 
 very simple English where some important 
 building is, and quite probably he will tell 
 
 240 
 
TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 you. Walk into any large shop and ask for 
 what you want, and if the clerk does not 
 understand "United States" he will call some 
 one who does. 
 
 Let me suggest a few reasons for the 
 spread of English among our neighbors on 
 the south. The first shall be a negative rea- 
 son. Hating Spain as they do, and with more 
 cause, historically speaking, than ever es- 
 tranged us from our British cousins, Mexi- 
 cans have no great tenacity for the Spanish 
 language. I am not wholly accounting for 
 the fact; but at least it is a fact. Before I 
 have ended, this will have become more ap- 
 parent. 
 
 A second reason for the tendency men- 
 tioned is the dearth of modern writing in 
 Spanish upon scientific and technical subjects. 
 If a young man expects to go far in the study 
 of architecture or engineering, he must read 
 English, becausfe enough books in Spanish 
 do not exist, original or translated. French 
 works are all that could be desired for aesthetic 
 treatment, but not as touching practical ques- 
 tions of construction. German is learned only 
 with difiiculty, being more purely Teutonic. 
 If the student turns his attention to medicine, 
 
 24.1 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 he must do his reading in either French or 
 English. French has been preferred, but 
 English is displacing it. The same is true of 
 any theology save that of the Roman church. 
 The most important school of Protestant the- 
 ology in the republic prescribes its reading 
 courses in English throughout, most of the 
 teachers being Americans. 
 
 The inadequacy of Spanish was smartly 
 alluded to once by a young Englishman of 
 my acquaintance. At a dinner party where 
 no other foreigner was present, he sat next a 
 young woman who lacked the usual courtesy of 
 her nation and who was disposed to humiliate 
 him. Having noticed his difficulty in Span- 
 ish, she made him confess that he knew but 
 little T'rench or German. "Then, sir, pray 
 what do you speak?" asked she. "Senorita, 
 thanks be to Heaven, I speak English very 
 well," came the retort. "One who can do 
 that need not learn all the other languages. 
 English will take me wherever I wish to go, 
 and whatever I wish to read I can read in 
 English." Blunt as was the answer, their 
 Mexican host applauded it. 
 
 The commercial aggressiveness of Amer- 
 icans and English is recognized as one cause 
 
TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 of the great strides made by our language the 
 world over, and not less in Mexico than else- 
 where. Already English is, more than Span- 
 ish, the medium of large business transactions 
 in the capital. This is more easily understood 
 the more one looks at statistics. According 
 to estimates something like a billion of Amer- 
 ican dollars is invested in Mexico. 
 
 Our linguistic stupidity and obstinacy may 
 be regarded as a cause of our linguistic tri- 
 umphs. In Mexico, Germans are considered 
 the best foreigners because of their quickness 
 to acquire both speech and customs, while 
 English and Americans are universally known 
 as the worst. Any of us who is even a little 
 instructed has frequent occasion to blush for 
 the ignorance and regardlessness of his coun- 
 trymen. Hence it follows, though the argu- 
 ment brings us doubtful credit, that those who 
 will treat with us must learn our ways and our 
 speech. Most Frenchmen and practically all 
 Germans in Mexico speak English as well as 
 Spanish. 
 
 Mexicans know the significance of these 
 facts, and every intelligent Mexican who does 
 not speak English is anxious to learn. I 
 knew well a teacher of scores of them, some 
 
 MS 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of whom can now use English almost as a 
 native tongue; and many more would have 
 become pupils if time could have been given 
 them. There were two other private teachers 
 of English in the same town, whose popula- 
 tion, excluding illiterates, would not be more 
 than ten thousand; and both teachers were 
 continually refusing work. Besides this pri- 
 vate instruction to adults, regular work in 
 English is required of all children in public 
 schools. From two to five years of English 
 is given in all state institutions of higher 
 grade, and practically the same is true of pri- 
 vate schools. 
 
 On one occasion the American teacher men- 
 tioned was invited to call upon the principal 
 of a large school for boys and asked to name 
 a price for certain hours of English. The 
 principal made some objection to his charge, 
 whereupon the Mexican friend who intro- 
 duced him declared: "The patrons of the 
 school pay more than that for music, which is 
 a mere ornamental accomplishment for most' 
 children. By and by, when the Yankees have 
 finished their pacific conquest of Mexico, we 
 shall learn which is more necessary, English 
 or music." 
 
TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 The pacific conquest is going on, though it 
 does not look at all toward political union. 
 
 To prophesy that in a few generations 
 English will be the universal language of 
 Mexico, would be to prophesy overmuch. 
 Spanish has never become a universal lan- 
 guage there. Thousands of Indians in the 
 remote villages still retain the primitive 
 speech of their ancestors. But in a few gen- 
 erations, possibly not more than two or three, 
 English seems destined to become the lan- 
 guage of Mexican schools and the language 
 of Mexican society generally. We have seen 
 that it has points of superiority as among the 
 Mexicans themselves, I have hinted at a 
 more potent reason for such prophecy; multi- 
 plied and growing interrelations make it in- 
 creasingly desirable that we and they shall 
 have a common speech. And when a com- 
 mon speech is established, it will be no arti- 
 ficial Esperanto, but a language that shall 
 naturally have become the medium because 
 of having proved itself, of the two now used 
 between us, the more vigorous and practical 
 for modern needs. Barring a catastrophe, 
 that language will of course be English. At 
 present it shows marvelous increase. 
 
 846 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Some who have studied general movements 
 and tendencies in the western world recog- 
 nize that more than Mexico and our border 
 states are concerned in the interplay of which 
 we are speaking. Without any thought of 
 political aggression the Latin influence 
 presses outward from the strong and growing 
 republics of South America, while the Anglo- 
 Saxon influence, so called, just as constantly 
 bears down from the north. Where the two 
 tides will definitely come to a balance is not 
 sure — that will depend on the outcome of 
 many material and moral fa.ctors; but the 
 Anglo-Saxon dominance appears not likely to 
 be eliminated north of the Isthmus of Pana- 
 ma. All of North America will some day, 
 we are thus constrained to believe, be one in 
 language and civilization, one in the funda- 
 mentals that concern society, just as all South 
 America promises to be one; and just as Can- 
 ada and the United States are already one, 
 geographers and politicians alike to the con- 
 trary. It is not government but the broader 
 social facts that this implies. 
 
 We chose the ocean route southward to 
 begin with, you will remember, partly be- 
 cause the Rio Grande looks so much alike on 
 
 ^46 
 
TIDES THAT MEET 
 
 its two banks; and we proposed not to be 
 cheated of contrasting the twentieth century 
 with the sixteenth. You may have it in mind 
 also that for five hundred miles the border is 
 not marked even by this puny stream, which 
 barring times of freshet may be forded at will. 
 We are divided only by a line on the map. 
 Why should we not intermingle and take on 
 each other's ways more or less, we and our so 
 near neighbors? 
 
 Ml 
 
XX 
 
 CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 
 
 THERE is very much, we discover, that 
 we would like to have got at first hand, 
 but must now gather in these secondary 
 ways. Familiarity with the bullfight will not 
 be one of them, for whoever wants to see a 
 bullfight has opportunity enough. I myself 
 am unacquainted from choice. Those to 
 whom the romantic traditional associations ob- 
 scure the actualities of the thing and who can 
 think back to the old tournament jousts 
 during a performance may enjoy it. Those 
 who wish to read about it are advised to take 
 Mr. Arthur M. Huntington's "Notebook in 
 Northern Spain," Miss Katharine Lee Bates's 
 "Spanish Highways and Byways," or any 
 one of a number of books in which it figures, 
 including the Mexican guide-books. To some 
 it is only an exhibition of st poor old horse 
 being impaled or having his entrails gored out 
 by a tortured animal that would gladly be let 
 
 M8 
 
CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 
 
 alone — sickening and revolting. Many Amer- 
 ican men who carry an air of bravado on their 
 travels and want to see what is to be seen are 
 unable to sit through one killing. Mexicans 
 apologize for the institution even while they 
 admit they enjoy it, and say that it is sure to 
 disappear, though its death is slow. The mor- 
 bid curiosity of foreigners helps to perpetuate 
 it. I never heard a Mexican silly enough to 
 argue that it is "less brutalizing than foot- 
 ball," though some Americans have so argued. 
 The infliction of bodily injury or pain is no 
 object in football unless to some player un- 
 worthy of the game---certainly not to the spec- 
 tator — while in bullfighting the glee of the 
 whole matter is the glee of killing. If the 
 bullfighter himself suffers, the sport is all 
 the better for that. 
 
 Many comparisons of various kinds at first 
 made to the detriment of Mexico are after- 
 ward revised. With writers about Mexico 
 the "palm shack" and the "mud hut" are fav- 
 orite objects of contempt. The bamboo and 
 paper house of the Japanese is appreciated, 
 but the Mexican palm shack, which may be a 
 cousin to it, is still treated with derision or 
 disgust, Yet the palm shack has its meritSr 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 It affords excellent ventilation where ventila- 
 tion is desirable; and if it is not always of 
 marked cleanliness, neither are the places 
 where men and women starve among us at 
 home. At its best it may be very inviting. 
 The "mud hut," that is the adobe house, is 
 certainly the kind I should build in Mexico 
 if I could spend only two or three thousand 
 dollars on a dwelling. It is fire-proof, earth- 
 quake resisting, warm in winter, cool in sum- 
 mer, highly durable, and, when plastered, 
 capable of being colored and recolored to suit 
 the taste of the occupants, at small expense. 
 I have mentioned one in Oaxaca that is two 
 himdred and fifty years old and still good. 
 
 Whoever speaks of Mexico as a benighted 
 country does not refer to the method of light- 
 ing her towns. A direct change from the 
 candle lantern to the electric arc took place 
 there while only the most progressive Amer- 
 ican towns had as yet adopted electric light- 
 ing. As Mexico had no natural gas, no known 
 supply of native coal from which to make gas, 
 and no oil except what was imported, there was 
 every stimulus to develop her many slender 
 but high waterfalls from which abundant elec- 
 tric current could be generated. Part of the 
 
 250 
 
CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 
 
 lacks named above have since been filled; 
 though domestic coal is still not abundant, and 
 so iron, of which there are considerable de- 
 posits, especially in Durango, is smelted at a 
 disadvantage and in limited quantities, Mon- 
 terey has the largest. and most modern plant, 
 where even heavy Bessemer steel rails are 
 made. 
 
 The Mexicans as a people are artistic in 
 temperament and intellectual when given a 
 chance. In an imitative way they are clever 
 at all sorts of handicrafts. They have less 
 mechanical ability than Americans, less busi- 
 ness invention or initiative, and less general 
 practicality. The representative Mexican 
 physician, I believe, knows as much of the 
 theory of his profession as the American 
 physician, and has done more reading aside 
 from his profession; but for applying his 
 knowledge to cases commend me to the Amer- 
 ican. I have known of some unfortunate ex- 
 periences with Mexican doctors, and particu- 
 larly surgeons, for whom as men of culture 
 and of intellect I had great respect. The 
 same characteristics appear in the trades. A 
 Mexican carpenter can do nothing for you 
 which requires ingenuity; but if he makes you 
 
 S51 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 a plain chest he will insist on making it better 
 than the American carpenter would think 
 worth while. 
 
 Mexicans on their part are as likely to 
 think us better than we are as to, think us 
 worse. A native preacher of really admirable 
 attainments after spending a winter in New 
 York gave an account of his impressions. It 
 was extremely interesting but also amusing to 
 some American hearers because of the way in 
 which he lauded us for merits that we do not 
 possess. The extreme courtesy of everybody 
 in New York was one subject of comment 
 with him. New York policemen, he observed, 
 are not armed, except with a stick, and have 
 no need to be. 
 
 That there are some speakers and writers 
 who regard Americans as mere exploiters of 
 their country cannot be denied, and while un- 
 balanced, their view has an element of truth. 
 Americans own some of the henequin planta- 
 tions of Yucatan, control mines where labor 
 is as much oppressed and safety of life as 
 little regarded as ever under Spanish manage- 
 ment, and hold large areas of unimproved 
 land which an iniquitous system long made 
 exempt from taxation. American policy of 
 
 252 
 
CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 
 
 finance compelled a constant apology or de- 
 fense of the Diaz administration when it was 
 indefensible, and so made us enemies of prog- 
 ress among our southern neighbors. It is de- 
 clared, let us hope falsely, that the counter- 
 revolution and attempt to overturn Madero's 
 progressive government was partly financed 
 from Wall Street. 
 
 There are, of course, no end of customs and 
 objects in Mexico which do not lend them- 
 selves to any comparison at all but which one 
 remembers and would like to describe. One 
 is the celebration of Christmas. The puestos 
 or special Christmas markets are interesting, 
 but I have reference more to the Posada, 
 which translated means "the inn." A shrine 
 is set up, and the manger, the divine babe, 
 Mary, and Joseph are represented as well as 
 other figures or incidents pertaining to the 
 life of Christ. Some of the company remain 
 inside while others forming a procession out- 
 side sing or chant their supplication for ad- 
 mittance. This is denied, also in song, nine 
 times, symbolizing the failure of Mary and 
 Joseph to find lodging, but on the tenth time 
 it is granted, after which the remainder of 
 the solemnity is held before the shrine. A 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 less serious part of the ceremony comes with 
 the giving of gifts, which are likely to be 
 figures in the forms of dancers, clowns, or 
 animals, filled with candy or other dainties. 
 Larger figures of earthenware are hung from 
 the ceiling, and blindfolded members of the 
 party hit at them with sticks, the aim being to 
 make sudden distribution of the contents. 
 
 Another curious custom belongs to the 
 Easter season. On Saturday of the semana 
 Santa (Easter week), at an appointed hour, 
 Judas the betrayer is burned with great 
 demonstration. I saw him suffer, representa- 
 tively, in front of several pulque shops on the 
 day which I recall. Announcement before- 
 hand will have gathered a considerable crowd 
 at each place. From the roof or upper win- 
 dow of the shop, a rope is made fast to some 
 opposite building. In proper time the man 
 who is to manage the affair shows himself 
 and slackens the rope so that it is within 
 reach from the ground. Then Judas is borne 
 out and greeted by shouts and the waving of 
 many small paper banners which have been 
 distributed by some merchant, perhaps the 
 keeper of the shop, and which bears an ad- 
 vertisement of his wares. 
 
 254i 
 
CUSTOMS AND COMPARISONS 
 
 Judas makes plain at once that some humor 
 is admitted to the occasion. He is sure to 
 have grotesque features, usually with a large 
 and well-colored nose, like those of our comic 
 valentines. Not infrequently he has a high 
 hat and always a coat that is "to laugh at." 
 He may have been given an old basket, or a 
 great empty gourd, or some cast-off garment 
 to sling across his arm to make him more 
 ludicrous. If his ordeal is to be before a shoe 
 shop instead of a "drinkery," then he will 
 probably have a pair of shoes or a hat which 
 will be coveted by the people below. So far 
 as I have observed, Judas always keeps a 
 cheerful air through the whole ceremony, until 
 the fatal end, when of course he can no longer 
 preserve any air at all. 
 
 Hurriedly taken to the middle of the street, 
 the curious figure is hung upon a rope, a fuse; 
 in the region of his coat-tail is lighted, and the 
 rope drawn tight again. Judas begins to re- 
 volve merrily, much to the enjoyment of the 
 crowd. Then some explosive in his inward 
 parts takes action, and all that is external, 
 being of paper, is either blown to tatters or 
 quickly consumed. 
 
 Once again the rope is lowered and scores 
 255 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 of loud-hooting boys charge at the flimsy 
 skeleton of Judas, which still remains 
 dangling. Perhaps, for mischief, it is jerked 
 out of reach again once or twice. But it is 
 soon caught, and every boy of the howling 
 company makes wild efforts to get at least 
 some splinter as a trophy. Doubly trium- 
 phant is he who clutches the one thing of 
 value that poor Judas possessed, whether that 
 may have been shoes, hat, or some other piece 
 of apparel. In an instant all is over, and the 
 crowd begins to disperse, every one with a 
 satisfied look. 
 
 This performance was doubtless attended, 
 generations ago, with religious fanaticism. 
 Now there is nothing of the sort, though it is 
 participated in by only the most ignorant of 
 the people. There seems to be no more 
 thought of symbolism ^an in our eating of 
 Easter eggs, and no more sentiment than in 
 most of our Fourth of July noise. It only 
 shows that the half-clothed and half -civilized 
 native peones and their families have as much 
 barbaric love of demonstration as many of us. 
 For a stranger, however, it is full of curious 
 interest and suggestion. 
 
 266 
 
XXI 
 
 LAST WORDS 
 
 NO, it is not true that the Rio Grande 
 makes a barrier four centuries wide. 
 We have a quite immediate reason for 
 being interested in a people who are so des- 
 tined to affect us and to be affected by us. 
 They recognize the future and are prepar- 
 ing for it; not only is English taught in all 
 their schools, as we have seen, but hundreds 
 of their young people are studying in vari- 
 ous institutions in the United States. It 
 behooves us to know what kind of people 
 they are, "They are all gentlemen of the 
 deadly knife or the too ready pistol," says 
 one. "The Mexican of position is 'an adroit 
 and plausible rascal. The poor Mexican is 
 a petty thief. They are polite, but their 
 politeness means nothing, A Northerner 
 can never understand them; and they do not 
 wish him 'to," 
 Now it is true that the carrying of arms is 
 
 257 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 more common in Mexico than among ns, 
 though less common just before the recent 
 outbreak than a few years earlier. That is 
 not a race characteristic, but belongs to a 
 state of society, as it did in the pioneer days 
 of our 'own West. I doubt whether we, less 
 accustomed to have weapons at fingers' 
 ends, should be more restrained in the use of 
 them if they became 'fashionable ornaments 
 among us. 
 
 It is true that hot 'all Mexicans of brains 
 are honest; but when the system under 
 which business and government have been 
 done is taken into account, the standards of 
 honesty that prevail are commendable. It 
 is 'true that parasites have occupied very 
 many of the public offices; but Mexico is not 
 alone in that reproach. A son of a gov- 
 ernor in one state drew a salary as in- 
 structor at an institute where he seldom or 
 never appeared; and meanwhile an under- 
 ling was paid a miserable pittance to do 
 the work. Some Americans in the town 
 characterized this arrangement in a way 
 that doubtless it deserved; but they did not 
 compare it with our system of appointing 
 first and second class post-masters to a sin- 
 ecure and paying an assistant rather meanly 
 to conduct the office. The governor's son was 
 only taking 'advantage of an analogous cor- 
 
 258 
 
LAST WORDS 
 
 rupt system against which it is true he 
 ought to have set himself resolutely as a 
 good citizen. About the same time, in the 
 same town, another young Mexican of the 
 same social set was dissplving a highly 
 lucrative partnership and going out to make 
 a place for himself in a new community be- 
 cause'he said he wished to be an honest man. 
 The ingenious conclusion is that Mexicans 
 are both honest and dishonest. There are 
 petty thieves among the poor and the un- 
 fortunate. As everywhere, their number 
 depends a good deal on the 'extent and de- 
 gree of misery that prevails, and on the 
 measures taken to discourage their activ- 
 ity. As for 'veracity, it has its different 
 codes and interpretations. A young man 
 who was studying English in a private 
 class said to the teacher: "The hours of my 
 work have changed so that I can no longer 
 attend." Two days later he made a spe- 
 cial errand to say : " I have lied to you. My 
 friends tell me that you Americans are very 
 literal, and that with you, if I mean to be 
 truthful, I must tell the exact 'truth. Now 
 the fact is that I have lost my employment 
 and cannot afford to pay for more lessons 
 at present. I hope to come back within a 
 few days or weeks." The Mexican is not 
 literal. But considerable acquaintance with 
 
 259 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 Mm does not make me think him especially 
 given to deceiving others to their hurt. 
 
 That he is polite cannot be denied. If 
 you meet a stranger or a procession of them 
 on any highway not a city street, there will 
 be none so lowly or so haughty that he will 
 not look to exchange greetings with you. A 
 baggage man will not bellow "One side!" 
 but will call instead, "With your permis- 
 sion, Senor!" If you have business deal- 
 ings with a Mexican, he may not always 
 have your interest foremost in his mind; 
 but to treat you with a manner lacking in 
 consideration would be to violate his own 
 breeding. There are a great many humor- 
 ous and entirely true stories of the courte- 
 ous airs with which gentlemen of the cross- 
 roads used to 'divest travelers of their be- 
 longings. One relates that a bandit asked 
 an American if he would graciously conde- 
 scend to favor him with "a light." The 
 American answered that it would be his 
 greatest pleasure. Before his j, action was- 
 comprehended, he had thrust the cool end 
 of his cigarette into the barrel of the small 
 revolver that he was carrying ready in hand, 
 and thrust the other end 'up to the mouth' of 
 the suppliant Latin. The only part of this 
 story that is not characteristic is the slow- 
 ness of the bandit. But if the Mexican is 
 
 260 
 
LAST WORDS 
 
 polite it ought not to be imputed to him for 
 evil, as he inherited it from both his Span- 
 ish and his Aztec ancestors, and it works no 
 inconvenience to any one except in the fact 
 that politeness is looked for in return. The 
 American railroad man has largely elimi- 
 nated himself from the republic not because 
 he was inefficient but 'because he carried an 
 air of contempt which, while it did not al- 
 ways reflect his actual feelings, did always 
 offend the sensitive native. I have had 
 grateful evidence that the politeness re- 
 i'erred to is not always hollow. And I re- 
 call what an elderly Englishman told me of 
 his experience. He had made a fortune and 
 had lost it all again. "And who do you sup- 
 pose came and offered me help to get back 
 on my feet?" he said. "Not any of the Eng- 
 lishmen that I had known from boyhood and 
 some of whom could have done it easily, 
 but two of the Mexicans whose high com- 
 pliments I had never thought meant any- 
 thing more than an extravagant habit. I 
 tell you, they showed themselves men and 
 friends, and I have never forgotten it." 
 The politeness of the poor has at least so 
 much, substance that you will constantly 
 see them share their scant meals of tortillas 
 and beans and do other acts of kindness to- 
 ward the beggars by the roadside. They 
 
 361 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 have no organized charities to take care of 
 worthy cases and it is to he feared many un- 
 worthy cases share in the bounty. 
 
 The writer in the Outlook mentioned 
 above quotes the owner of a one-hundred- 
 thousand-acre ranch in JSTew Mexico as 
 saying: ''I have bought tens of thousands 
 of sheep from Mexican shepherds with- 
 out a written contract and never had one 
 fail to do as he agreed, which is more 
 than I can say for American stockowners. " 
 He quotes Judge John R. McFie, Chief Jus- 
 tice of the Supreme Court of New Mexico, 
 thus: "Nowhere have I found better jurors 
 or men with a higher sense of justice than 
 the Mexicans. I have tried murder cases 
 where the defendants were Mexicans and 
 every member of the jury was of that na- 
 tionality, yet have always found the verdict 
 fairly given and conviction has followed 
 regularly if the testimony warranted. 
 They are good citizens, are fair-minded, and 
 adhere to the Court's instructions more 
 closely than any other jurors I have found. 
 Probably there are more defendants of this 
 race than of Americans, proportionately to 
 the population, but their offenses are 
 mostly of a minor sort." 
 
 Remember that this relates chiefly to 
 poor Mexicans of the laboring class, though 
 
 262 
 
LAST WORDS 
 
 as once indicated above there are also many 
 cultured and intelligent Mexicans who have 
 preferred never to leave the United States. 
 Is it not gratuitous to assume that such 
 people in their own country would be in- 
 capable of democratic self-government, once 
 given a little^ practical training and a 
 chance? Yet this was the assiunption of 
 the American press in general during the 
 revolution of 1910-11. Not until its close, 
 indeed, did the American press admit that 
 any such movement was under way. The 
 Public, in its issue of June 9, 1911, said: "In 
 less than a year after all the great news- 
 papers were assured that there was no revo- 
 lution in Mexico — assured into silence — 
 they are obliged to report the complete 
 overthrow of Diaz by a revolution that was 
 in full vigor while they ignored it. Was 
 this poor journalism, or what?" 
 
 The revolution ran its course, constitu- 
 tional government was set going for the first 
 time in a generation, and the reiactionary 
 efforts that every one foresaw were soon be- 
 gun with more than the expected energy 
 and violence. Since then, no one has felt 
 altogether sure of the course that affairs 
 will take. The Mexico that at present ex- 
 ists, politically, is unfamiliar to me. A few 
 months before, I had scarcely heard of the 
 
 263 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 men who came into prominence with the 
 Madero movement; it was hard for any- 
 Mexican to be generally heard of who did 
 not belong to Diaz's group. In March, 
 1911, when I visited the city of Oaxaca, a 
 local engineer was in prison for disseminat- 
 ing treasonable ideas, as the government re- 
 garded them. His friends told me that he 
 would doubtless be stood against a wall to 
 face a firing squad. Three months later I 
 received word that our engineer was now 
 jefe politico of a near-by town and that the 
 district superintendent of the native Meth- 
 odists was his apoderado (deputy). Only 
 those somewhat familiar with the opposi- 
 tion to Protestant work in Oaxaca during 
 the past can appreciate the latter fact; nor 
 can those who never chanced to talk with 
 his anxious friends and relatives find the 
 ups and downs of the engineer so exciting 
 as they were to me ; yet some notion will be 
 gathered of how complete an overturning 
 had taken place in a short time. 
 
 During the fall of 1910 Francisco Madero 
 himself was in prison. On the 7th of June, 
 1911, he was given such an ovation at the 
 capital as probably no other Mexican ever 
 received. And there at the heart of the Re- 
 public where he was best able to make him- 
 self understood, the people never ceased to 
 
 264 
 
LAST WORDS 
 
 believe in him, National agencies for pub- 
 licity, however, were at no time so highly 
 developed in Mexico as agencies ' for the 
 suppression of knowledge long were; and 
 even if the best means for the purpose had 
 been ready at hand it is doubtful whether 
 Madero would have had the art to use them. 
 It is a great deal to find an advanced idealist 
 and an administrator united in one man; 
 and that he should also be both a politician 
 and a military genius would perhaps be too 
 much to expect. Madero did not take effec- 
 ive steps to keep the people informed of 
 what, the government was doing. So it be- 
 came possible for those who object to the 
 imposition of taxes on the great landed es- 
 tates, those who are hostile to any and all 
 progressive measures whatsoever, and those 
 who merely resented being dislodged from 
 their places under the despotism, to stir up 
 the ignorant, the disinherited, and the un- 
 happy against him. The real cause of hat- 
 red toward him being that he was a 
 thoroughgoing progressive, they made the 
 hypocritical complaint that he was doing 
 nothing for progress or in the interest of the 
 poor. It is true that those who had unin- 
 telligently looked for immediate and direct 
 confiscation of ill-gotten lands were- of 
 course disappointed. They lent themselves 
 
 265 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 to the movement against Madero, ended in 
 his overthrow and assassination early in 
 1913, by the reactionary traitor General 
 Victoriano Huerta, whose infamous govern- 
 ment the United States refused to recognize 
 even in the de facto sense. They have con- 
 tinued to embarass the now existing govern- 
 ment of President Carranza. Under the 
 fierce and fanatical though doubtless sincere 
 leadership of Emiliano Zapata, lately ap- 
 prehended and killed through the defection 
 of some of his own men, they have overrun 
 whole states in the South and even briefly 
 held possession of the capital. Under the 
 less worthy though vigorous and sagacious 
 leadership of Francisco Villa they have 
 harassed the North, provoked the United 
 States beyond endurance by border raids, 
 and otherwise delayed the return of pros- 
 perity and peace. To their groups, however 
 deserving of sjonpathy the rank and file niay 
 be, all the worst elements of lawlessness and 
 brutality naturally hang on. They are the 
 menace of national security in Mexico to- 
 day; and they are the product of old wrongs. 
 As for the active military leaders who 
 personally took the field for the ' counter- 
 revolution, they should hardly be classed 
 with any group of interests or prejudices. 
 Desperados and bold adventurers who will 
 
 266 
 
LAST WORDS 
 
 fight for hire are no national phenomenon; 
 and their theory is very simple. 
 
 The judgment of Americans as touching 
 government in Mexico has been too much 
 affected by the belief that this, that, or the 
 other element is favorable or unfavorable 
 to the United States. It may be well to re- 
 mind ourselves that the legitimate choice of 
 any leader in Mexico has only secondary 
 reference to us and that such choice has 
 reference mostly to the well being of Mex- 
 ico. A president or governor who ardently 
 desires to serve the Mexican republic, 
 whose scheme gives due regard to funda- 
 mental justice, and who has the force to 
 carry out his scheme, is a good Mexican 
 president or governor, whatever he may 
 think of us, his neighbors on the North. 
 That Venustiano Carranza, like his former 
 young leader, Madero, is a man of the most 
 genuine patriotism and of very high ideals 
 no discerning and impartial critic can well 
 doubt. His attitude toward the United 
 States has been uncertain at times, but 
 clearly it was dictated at all times by a de- 
 termination to protect the just rights of his 
 own people, and he has always declared 
 himself personally friendly to the legiti- 
 mate projects of Americans in Mexico. 
 However that may be, it is by his aims and 
 
 267 
 
A MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 competence as a servant of Mexican dem- 
 ocracy that he must be judged. 
 
 As for Madero, that he was no master 
 •^f military strategy his friends and enemies 
 alike have agreed. He was a civilian in 
 ideals and in natural temper. His leader- 
 ship was a moral leadership and signified 
 national faith in the possibility of a genuine 
 civil government for the nation. If he 
 erred it was in trusting overmuch to civil 
 measures and dallying with men like Zapata 
 when nobody but himself thought he could 
 quiet the brigand by anything but the iron 
 hand. The recompense of armed outlawry 
 should be swift and terrible; and to make it 
 so need involve no suspicion of despotic 
 purpose. The necessity, if government is 
 to endure, is almost axiomatic. 
 
 Carranza is of Madero 's school of think- 
 ing, but sterner and less sentimental. 
 
 Whether the friends of democratic consti- 
 tutional government shall remain upper- 
 most will depend largely on the courage, re- 
 sourcefulness, and unwavering patriotism 
 of a few individuals. This is always true 
 at a crisis; for those who are given the 
 greatest power to serve have also the power 
 to betray. Washington and his immediate 
 lieutenants might have been able to set up 
 an American tyranny, if they had so willed. 
 
 268 
 
LAST WORDS 
 
 Fortunately, though soldiers and generals 
 gallantly participated, Mexico owes its de- 
 liverance from the old bondage not to any 
 general mainly, but to a popular uprising 
 and to Francisco Madero. Bernardo Reyes, 
 the only general of whom anything was ex- 
 pected, proved an enemy of the people's 
 cause. Men like Orozco and Villa have ex- 
 hibited their character so plainly as almost 
 to remove the peril that any mere fighter 
 may be blindly chosen as a popular idol. 
 They have no appeal to make but a shame- 
 less, appeal to force; and Mexico is genu- 
 inely tired of that. 
 
 That turbulence has arisen as it has 
 proves little against the Mexican people. A 
 larger army was required to put down the 
 Whiskey Rebellion in the United States 
 than had been in the field against the Brit- 
 ish at any time during our war for inde- 
 pendence; yet the WMsky Rebellion w^« 
 put down. We had not only our Arnold 
 during the Revolution but our Burr after it 
 was over; yet the Republic survived and the 
 guardians of order and safety kept their 
 seats. All sincere and intelligent demo- 
 crats will hope that Carranza in Mexico 
 may keep his, till he can vacate it for an 
 honorable successor elected by the people, 
 and that so the principles of Juarez may be- 
 come established. 
 
 269 1 
 
A' MEXICAN JOURNEY 
 
 If the Republic fails it will be because 
 some supremely powerful man has risen 
 and bas become a traitor to the people; and 
 if no such man succeeds in rearing himself 
 tiU Carranza's successor is elected, l 
 cause will be reasonably safe. Whatever 
 the outcome, be assured that there is a gen- 
 eral and sincere longing among the people 
 for the guarantees of liberty, a genuine 
 respect for law, and a full consciousness of 
 the necessity for order and individual sub- 
 mission to the sovereign will. Sometime, 
 too, if not at present, these things will be 
 achieved. The Indian patience waits long 
 but does not forget its object. Perhaps 
 something of the old high dauntlessness of 
 the Spaniard ought also to be separately 
 recognized in the Mexican spirit. Or per- 
 haps we should recognize in it simply hu- 
 manity aware of itself. For it Mexican 
 men by the thousands have willingly 
 languished in prisons. ]\Iexican women 
 have offered their bodies as food for starv- 
 ing soldiers. For over a century it has per- 
 sisted, often obscured, sometimes betrayed 
 into error, but never quenched; and in the 
 end it wiU not be denied. 
 
 270 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Bancroft, "The Native Races of the Pacific States "; 
 "A Popular History of the Mexican People"; "Re- 
 sources and Development of Mexico"; "History of 
 the Pacific States." Prescott, " Conquest of Mexico." 
 Wallace, "The Fair God." Biart (Lucien), "The 
 Aztecs," translated from the French by J. L. Garner, 
 Humboldt, "A Political Essay on the Kingdom oi 
 New Spain;" "GeograpTiy of the New Continent," 5 
 vols. Lord Kingsborough, "Antiquities of Mexico," 
 9 vols. Brocklehurst, "Mexico To-day." Wright, 
 "Picturesque Mexico." Tweedie, "Mexico As I Saw 
 It." Hale (Susan), "History of Mexico." Burke 
 (N. R.), "Life of Benito Juarez." Stephens, "Inci- 
 dents of Travel in Yucatan." Lumholtz, " Unknown 
 Mexico." Creelman, "Master of Mexico." Flandrau, 
 "Viva Mexico." Smith, "A White Umbrella in Mex- 
 ico." Kirkham," Mexican Trails." Butler, "Sketches 
 in Mexico." Barton, "Impressions of Mexico." 
 Campbell, "Guide to Mexico." Terry, "Guide to 
 Mexico." Gooch, " Face to Face with the Mexicans." 
 Lummis, " The Awakening of a Nation." Ober (F. A.) , 
 "Travels in Mexico"; "History of Mexico." Romero 
 (M.), "Geographical and Statistical Notes on Mex- 
 ico"; "Mexico and the United States." Calderon de 
 la Barca (F. I.), "Life in Mexico during a Residence 
 of Two Years in that Country"; "Mexican Year 
 Book." Noll (A. H.) & McMahon (A. P.), "Life and 
 Times of Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo." Turner (J. K.), 
 "Barbarous Mexico." Edwards (W. S.), "On the 
 Mexican Highlands." Harper (H. H.), "Journey in 
 Southeastern Mexico." Wallace (D.), "Beyond the 
 Mexican Sierras"; "Foreign Relations." Douglas 
 (J.), "United States and Mexico." 
 
 871 
 
INDEX 
 
 AcAPiTLCO, 223-224. 
 Acolhuas, the, 16. 
 Adobe houses, 249-250. 
 Agriculture, god of, 187-188. 
 Agricultural products, amount of, 
 
 90. 
 Aguas Calientes, 202. 
 Alameda, park in Mexico City, 
 
 120, 137-143. 
 Amecameca, 190. 
 
 American capital invested in Mex- 
 ico, 243. 
 Americans in Mexico, 237-238, 
 
 252-253. 
 Animals, quiescent spirit of Mex- 
 ican, 203-205. 
 Archaeology, Mexican, 133-135. 
 
 See Ruins. 
 Arrow-head souvenirs, 189. 
 Art- 
 cathedral, Mexico City, 121. 
 chvirch of Santa Rosa, Quere- 
 
 taro, 203. 
 "Descent from the Cross" at 
 
 Tzintzuntzan, 222. 
 despoliation of objects of, by 
 
 the French, 132, 203. 
 Juarez statue, Mexico City, 
 
 140. 
 National Academy (San 
 
 Carlos). 119, 130-133. 
 
 post office, Mexico City, 138. 
 
 Puebla cathedral, 180-181. 
 
 theater, Mexico City, 138. 
 
 Arts, aptitude of Mexicans for all 
 
 the, 140-142, 251. 
 "Aunt Mary," 211-212. 
 
 Aztec Indians, 16-22. 
 
 antiquities. National Museum, 
 
 133-135. 
 calendar of, 135. 
 choice of site of town by, 
 
 136. 
 conquest of, 145. 
 "Forum" of, 136. 
 pyramid, Mexico City, 120. 
 religion of, 125. 
 
 Bandits, 161, 210, 217, 260-261. 
 Bates, Katharine Lee, work by, 
 
 cited, 248. 
 Blanket, a Mexican, 210-211. 
 Borda Garden, Cuemavaca, 174- 
 
 175. 
 Borde, Joseph le, 174, 175. 
 Bryan, W. J., 200. 
 Bullfighters. 11. 
 Bullfights, 143-144, 248-249. 
 
 Cabeeba, painting attributed to, 
 
 222. 
 Calderon de la Barca, Mme., 149. 
 Calendar, the Aztec, 135. 
 Campeche, 34. 
 Canal, the Viga, 165-169. 
 Canals, Xochimilco, 169, 171. 
 Canoe trip, Viga Canal, 164-169. 
 Cariote, Empress, 137, 143, 153- 
 
 154, 176. 
 Carrefio, Juan'de, paintings by,132. 
 Casas, Bartolome de las, portrait 
 
 of, 132. 
 Casas Grandes, the, 16. 
 Catacombs, Guanajuato, 203. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Cathedral — 
 
 Cuernavaca, 174. 
 
 Mexico City, 120-121, 181. 
 
 Puebia, 180-181. 
 Catholicism in Mexico, 124-126, 
 
 149-150. 
 Cattle raising. Chihuahua, 234. 
 Cemetery, Real del Monte, 217- 
 
 218. 
 Chapala, Lake, 205, 222. 
 Chapultepec, 17, 120, 142-143. 
 Charles V, Emperor, 180. 
 
 statue of, 142. 
 Chichimec Indians, 15-16. 
 Chihuahua, city of, 228, 233-234. 
 Chihuahua, state of, 234. 
 Chinese, 224-225. 
 Chinos, Indians called, 222. 
 Chivela, 70-71. 
 Cholula, 179, 182-189. 
 
 Toltec pyramid at, 180, 185- 
 188. 
 Christmas customs, 253-254. 
 Church, on pyramid at Cholula, 
 
 186. 
 Churches — 
 
 Cholula, 188. 
 
 Mexico City, 126-128. 
 , Puebia, 179-181. 
 
 Queretaro, 203. 
 
 Xochimilco, 170. 
 City Hall, Mexico City, 135-136. 
 Ciudad Porfirio Diaz, 228. 
 Civil marriages, 149-150. 
 Coatzaeoalcos, 85-86. 
 Cochineal industry, 95, 
 Colhuan Indians, 17. 
 Columbus, remains of, 32. 
 Constitution of Juarez, 162-163. 
 Copper, annual production of, 233. 
 Cornish miners, 206. 
 Cortcz, Fernando, 18, 21, 23, 94, 
 101, 136, 145, 174, 183, 188, 
 130, 203. 
 
 palaces of, 174. 
 Courtesy in Mexico, 260-262. 
 Coyocican, 174. 
 
 Cuauhtemoc, statue of, 22, 142. 
 
 Cuautla, 175. 
 
 Cuba, 30-33. 
 
 Cuernavaca, 164, 172, 173-175. 
 
 Diaz, Poefibio, 11, 13, 28, 62, 73. 
 accession to presidency, 157. 
 birthplace, Oaxaca, 97. 
 capture of Puebia, 179. 
 discontent universal under, 
 
 159, 160. 
 drainage canal completed by, 
 
 137. 
 feeling among people toward, 
 
 160-162. 
 form of Juarez' government 
 
 followed by, 183. 
 Indian blood of, 11. 
 massacre of men of Tehuan- 
 
 tepec by, 73. 
 overthrow of, 263-266. 
 principle of government, 157^ 
 
 159. 
 proof of strong hand, 217. 
 relations with Juarez, 154- 
 
 157. 
 repressive measures of, 74-75. 
 Rurales organized by, 74. 
 Diego, Juan, 127. 
 Dollars, Mexican, 207-208. 
 Domes of churches, 170, 179-180. 
 Drainage canal, Mexico City, 136- 
 
 137, 166. 
 Drawn-work on linen, Aguas 
 
 Calientes, 202. 
 Drinking, question of, 68-70. 
 Durango, city of, 228-229. 
 iron deposits at, 251. 
 
 Eagle Pass, Texas, 228. 
 Easter celebration, 254-256. 
 Egypt, correspondences between 
 
 Mexico and, 133-134. 
 Electric lighting systems, 250-251. 
 El Paso, Texas, 228. 
 English colony, Real del Monte, 
 
 217-219. 
 
 874 
 
INDEX 
 
 English language, progress of, in 
 Mexico, 236-245. 
 
 Eslava, 172. 
 
 Family life, 115-117, 177-178. 
 Farm product statistics, 90. 
 Flandrau, C. M., quoted, 5. 
 Floating gardens, Xochimilco, 167. 
 Flower market, Mexico City, 119, 
 
 128. 
 French — 
 
 attempt of, to conquer Mex- 
 ico, 150-153. 
 defeats and victories, 179. 
 spoliation of art treasures, 132, 
 203. 
 French language, use of, in Mex- 
 ico, 241, 242. 
 Frontera, 86. 
 
 Funeral, Real del Monte, 218. 
 Funeral electric cars, Mexico City, 
 113. 
 
 Garces, Fray Jxtlian, 179. 
 
 Germans in Mexico, 243. 
 
 Gobelin tapestries, Puebla cathe- 
 dral. 180. 
 
 Gold, annual production of, 233. 
 
 Guadalajara. 176, 202. 
 
 Guadalupe, chapel of Lady of, 
 126-128. 
 
 Guanajuato, city of, 202, 222. 
 
 Guatemala, secession of, 146. 
 
 Guaymas, 224. 
 
 Harbors — 
 
 Acapulco, 223. 
 
 Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 86. 
 
 Tehuantepec, 81-82. 
 
 western coast, 224. 
 
 Yucatan, 34. 
 Harger, C. M., Outlook article by, 
 
 235-236, 262-263. 
 Havana, 31-33. 
 Henequin-growing, 39, 42, 61. 
 Hidalgo, Miguel. 146. 160-161, 
 234. 
 
 Honduras, originally a part of 
 Mexico, 146. 
 
 Huitzilopochitli, god of war, 19. 
 
 Humboldt, A. von, cited and 
 quoted, 4, 86, 101, 125. 
 
 Huntington, Arthur M., ."Note- 
 book in Northern Spain" by, 
 248. 
 
 Ibarra, painting attributed to, 
 
 222 
 Indians, 10-11, 14-22. 
 
 laborers in mines, 231-232. 
 
 of western sierras, 222. 
 
 sulphur carriers, Popocate- 
 petl, 190. 
 
 Tarahumare, 234. 
 Inlay work, Puebla cathedral, 181. 
 Interoceanic Railway, 182. 
 Iron deposits, 251. 
 Iturbide, Augustin de, 145, 146, 
 
 147, 148, 179. 
 Ixtaccihuatl, 143, 180, 199. 
 
 mosaic picture of, 138. 
 
 Jalisco, state of, 202. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, cited, 122-123. 
 
 Juarez, Benito, 11, 97, 148, 158. 
 
 becomes president, 148. 
 
 government of, 164-156. 
 
 Madero the representative of 
 principles of, 268-269. 
 
 measures of, concerning re- 
 ligious toleration, 160. 
 
 statue, 140. 
 
 veneration for name of, 160. 
 Juarez, town of. Chihuahua, 228. 
 Juchitan, 72. 
 
 Jungle, Tehuantepec, 70-71, 83- 
 85. 
 
 Laborers — 
 
 in mines, Zacatecas, 231-232. 
 Yucatan plantations, 44-46, 
 61-56. 
 Lady of Guadalupe, chapel of, 
 126-128. 
 
 275 
 
INDEX 
 
 La Quemada, 2S9. 
 
 Laredo, Texas, 228. 
 
 Lead, annual production of, 233. 
 
 Lumbering, Chihuahua, 234. 
 
 McPiE, Judge John R., quoted, 
 
 262-263. 
 Madero, Francisco, 13, 62, 253. 
 government established by, 
 162, 2d5-270. 
 Madero revolution, 253, 263- 
 
 270. 
 Maguey fields, 164, 166, 206, 207, 
 
 215-216. 
 Malintzi, Mt., 180. 
 Maltrata curve, 106. 
 Manufactures — 
 
 at Chihuahua, 234. 
 of iron and steel, 251. 
 Manzanillo, 224. 
 Marriage, civil, 149-150. 
 Massacre of men of Tehuantepec 
 
 by Diaz, 72-73. 
 Maximilian, Emperor, 143, 153- 
 
 154, 203. 
 Maya Indians, Yucatan, 44-45, 
 
 47-48. 
 Mazatlan, 224. 
 Merida, 34, 41, 46. 
 Metric system, use of, 208. 
 Mexican Railway, 223-224. 
 Mexican War, 143, 147. 
 Mexico — 
 
 agricultin-e, 90. 
 animals, 203-205. 
 archaeology, 49, 133-135. 
 area, 2-3. 
 
 art and architecture, 119, 121, 
 
 130-133, 140-142, 180-181, 
 
 203, 221, 222, 251. 
 
 bullfights, 143-144, 248-249. 
 
 Catholicism in, 124-126, 149- 
 
 150. 
 climate, 6-9, 164. 
 coinage, 207-209. 
 Constitution of Juarez, 162- 
 163. 
 
 Mexico (cont'd) 
 
 contrasts and contradictions, 
 
 6. 
 drinking customs, 68-70. 
 family life, 115-117, 177-178. 
 French in, 150-153, 179. 
 government, 145-163, 265- 
 
 270. 
 harbors, 34, 81-82, 86, 223- 
 
 224. 
 history, 145-160. 
 honesty of people, 262-263. 
 Indians, 10-11, 14-22, 222, 
 
 234. 
 Inquisition in, 146. 
 iron deposits, 251, 
 lakes, 222. 
 
 languages in, 236-245. 
 Madero revolution, 253, 263- 
 
 270. 
 manufactures, 234, 251. 
 mineral resources, 80, 233, 
 
 251. 
 mineral wealth per year, 233. 
 missionaries, 124-126. 
 money, 207-209. 
 mountains, 4-5, 190-201. 
 music, 141. 
 
 national customs, 248-256. 
 original extent, 146-147. 
 people, 10-22, 72-73, 77-81, 
 
 121-124, 215, 217, 222, 224- 
 
 228, 235-237. 
 people who will inherit, 171- 
 
 172. 
 politeness in, 260-262. 
 professions and trades, 251- 
 
 252. 
 progress of English language, 
 
 236-245. 
 railroads, 23-24, 81-82, 87- 
 
 88, 110, 223, 224, 228, 239. 
 religions, 124-126, 148-150. 
 silver mines, 206-207, 229- 
 
 233. 
 the new Republic, 263-270. 
 towns, 202-209. 
 
 276 
 
INDEX 
 
 Mexico (cont'd) 
 
 vegetation, 83-85. 
 
 weights and measures, 
 209. 
 
 western coast line, 220. 
 
 women, 72-80, 121-122, 
 ' 226. 
 Mexico City, 67, 109-144. 
 
 Americans in; 240. 
 
 art, 133-135, 138. 
 
 atmospheric pressure, 9. 
 
 bullfights, 143-144, 248- 
 
 cathedral, 120-121, 181. 
 
 choice of site, 136-137. 
 
 churches, 126-128. 
 
 City Hall, 135-136. 
 
 comparisons with other 
 italcities, 111-112, 143- 
 
 cosmopolitan character, 
 111. 
 
 drainage canal, 136-137. 
 
 English language in, 240- 
 
 Flower market, 119, 128 
 
 gaiety of, considered, 
 144. 
 
 hotels, 110. 
 
 houses, 115-117. 
 
 National Academy of 
 (San Carios), 119, 130- 
 
 National Museum, 133- 
 
 National Palace, 119. 
 
 National Pawn Shop, 
 129-130, 214. 
 
 newspapers, 109. 
 
 opera in, 139. 
 
 parks, 119-120, 137-143. 
 
 people, 139. 
 
 post office, 137-138. 
 
 residences, 115-118. 
 
 slums, 139. 
 
 theater, 138-139. 
 
 Thieves' Market, 119, 
 129. 
 Michoacan, state of, 202. 
 Minerals, Tehuantepec, 80. 
 Mines, Guanajuato, 202. 
 Mining, 229-233, 
 
 Mint, Guanajuato, 202. 
 
 Missionaries, 124-126. 
 207- Mitla, ruins at, 100, 103-106. 
 
 Monte Alban, ruins of, 98-99. 
 
 Montejo, house of, Merida, 47. 
 225- Monterey, 228, 235. 
 
 iron and steel plant at, 251. 
 
 Montezimia, 143. 
 
 Morelia, 202, 222. 
 
 Morelos, valley and state of, 164, 
 175. 
 -249. Morro Castle, 30-31. 
 
 Murillo, paintings by, 121, 132. 
 
 Music, Mexican appreciation of, 
 141. 
 
 cap- Napoleon III, schemes of, 150- 
 -144. 153. 
 
 110- National Academy of Arts, 119, 
 130-132. 
 
 National Museum, 133-135. 
 -241. National Palace, 119. 
 
 National Pawn Shop, 119, 129- 
 143- 130, 214. 
 
 Negroes, Mexican, 225. 
 
 Nogales, Arizona, 228. 
 
 Nogales, Sonora, 228. 
 Arts Nuevo Laredo, 228. 
 -132. 
 -135. Oaxaca, city of, 92, 94-98, 174, 
 
 250, 264. 
 119, Oaxaca, state of, 13, 92, 264. 
 
 Ojo de Agua, lake, 212. 
 
 Omitlan, 212, 215. 
 
 Onyx, Mexican, 121. 
 
 Opera, Mexico City, 139. 
 
 Orizaba, city of, 106. 
 
 Orizaba, Mt., 179, 199. 
 
 Orozco, insurgent leader, 267. 
 
 Outlook article, cited and quoted, 
 235-236, 262-263. 
 128- Ox-carts, 82, 96. 
 
 Oxen, Cholula road, 183. 
 
 Pachuca, 205-209, 217. 
 Paintings — 
 
 cathedral, Mexico City, 121. 
 
 877 
 
INDEX 
 
 Paintings (cont'd) 
 
 "Descent from the Cross" at 
 Tziutzuntzan, 222. 
 
 National Academy, 132. 
 
 Puebla cathedral, 180-181. 
 Palm shacks, Mexican, 249-250. 
 Parra, Felix, painting by, 132, 133. 
 Paseo de los Cocos, Vera Cruz, 63. 
 Patzcuaro, Lake, 222. 
 Pearsons, the, 25, 87. 
 Peons, 122-123, 226-227, 231-232. 
 Perez, Senor, 192, 193, 198. 
 Pesos, Mexican dollars, 207. 
 Physicians, Mexican, 251. 
 Pohteness, Mexican, 260-262. 
 Popocatepetl, 143, 179, 180, 187. 
 
 altitude, 190. 
 
 appearance, 191. 
 
 ascent of, 190-201. 
 
 comparative ease of ascent, 
 201. 
 
 descent of, 199-200. 
 
 description of crater, 197-198. 
 
 meaning of name, 191. 
 
 mosaic picture of, 138. 
 
 pronunciation, 191. 
 
 railway to, projected, 88. 
 
 view from summit, 198. 
 Post office, Mexico City, 137-138. 
 Pottery of Guadalajara, 202. 
 Prehistoric monuments, Uxmal, 
 
 49. See Ruins. 
 Prescott, W. H., "Conquest of 
 
 Mexico" by, 21. 
 Progreso, 34, 41, 51. 
 Protestantism in Mexico, 124, 
 
 125-126. 
 Public, the, quoted, 263. 
 Puebla, city of, 175-181. 
 
 cathe(L:al, 180. 
 
 churches, 179-181. 
 
 history, 178-179. 
 
 naming of, 179. 
 
 population, 176. 
 
 society, 177-178. 
 
 suburbs, 176. 
 
 tiles made at, 180. 
 
 Puebla, state of, 175, 176. 
 Puerto Mexico, 85-86. 
 Pulque, 16, 206-207. 
 Pyramid — 
 
 Aztec, Mexico City, 120. 
 
 Toltec, Cholula, 180, 185-188. 
 Pyramids of Sun and Moon, 108, 
 186. 
 
 Queretaho, 202. 
 
 chapel at, 203. 
 
 execution of Maximilian at, 
 153. 
 Quetzalcoatl, god of peace, 19. 
 
 Railways — 
 
 building of first, 24. 
 
 connections by, with United 
 States, 110, 228. 
 
 English spoken on, 239. 
 
 on west coast, 224. 
 
 Tehuantepec line, 81-82, 87- 
 88. 
 Ratichmen, characteristics of, 192. 
 Rattlesnakes, Lake Chapala, 205. 
 Real, shilling, 208". 
 Real del Monte, 210, 216, 217, 218. 
 Regla, 210, 212-215. 
 Regla, Count of, 214. 
 Religious toleration, 148-149. 
 Reni, Guido, paintings by, 132. 
 Reyes, Bernardo, 267. 
 Rubber industry, 88-90. 
 Rubens, paintings by, 132. 
 Ruins — 
 
 La Quemada, 229. 
 
 Mitla, 100, 103-106. 
 
 Monte Alban, 98-99. 
 
 Tula, 16-17. 
 
 Uxmal, 49. 
 
 Yucatan, 48-50. 
 Rurales, organization of, by Diaz, 
 74. 
 
 Sacrificial stones, 13S, 168, 184. 
 Salina Cruz, 82-83, 223. 
 San Angel, suburb of, 137, 
 
 878 
 
INDEX 
 
 San Antonio, town of, 212. 
 
 San Antonio, Texas, 235. 
 
 San Bias, 224. 
 
 San Carlos, Aeademy of, 119, 130- 
 
 132. 
 San Juan de Ulua, Castle of, Vera 
 
 Cruz, 61-62. 
 San Juan Teotihuacan, Pyramids 
 
 at, 108. 
 San Luis Potosi, 202. 
 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 
 
 147-148. 
 Santa Lucrecia, 67-70. 
 Santa Rosa, church of, Queretaro, 
 
 203. 
 Santo Domingo, church of, Oax- 
 
 aca, 96. 
 Seward, William H., cited, 148. 
 Silver, annual production of, 233. 
 Silver mining, 206-207. 
 Slavery question, Yucatan, 61-66. 
 Slums, Mexico City, 139. 
 Southern Cross, the, 216. 
 Spaniards in Mexico, 20-22. 
 Spanish language, displacement of, 
 
 and reasons, 241-242. 
 Springs — 
 
 at Xochimilco, 169. 
 sulphur, at Cuautla, 176. 
 Statues — 
 
 Mexico City, 140, 142. 
 of Hidalgo, 145. 
 Puebla cathedral, 180. 
 Steel manufacture, Monterey, 251. 
 Stephens, John L., cited, 50. 
 Suarez, Pino, 48. 
 Sulphur from Popocatepetl, 190, 
 
 198. 
 Sulphur springs, Cuautla, 175. 
 
 Tacubata, suburb of Mexico 
 
 City, 137. 
 Tampico, 67. 
 
 Tapestries, Puebla cathedral, 180. 
 Tarahumare Indians, 234. 
 Taxicabs, Mexico City, 112. 
 Tehuacan, 93-94. 
 
 Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, 67-91. 
 Tehuantepec, town of, 72-73, 
 
 75-82. 
 Temples, Cholula, 188. 
 Teotihuacan, pyramids at, 186. 
 Tetrazzini, 139. 
 Texas, cities of, corresponding to 
 
 cities across the border, 228. 
 Texcoco, Lake, 127, 179. 
 Theaters, 138-139, 203. 
 Thieves' Market, 119, 128-129. 
 Tile manufacture, Puebla, 180. 
 Time-tables, the matter of, 65-66. 
 Titian, paintings by, 132, 222. 
 Tlacolula, 100-101. 
 Tlaxcalan Indians, 19. 
 Toltec Indians, 15. 
 Torreon, 228, 229, 233, 237-239 
 Tree of Tule, 101. 
 Tula, ruins at, 16-17. 
 Tule, village of, 101-102. 
 Tzintzuntzan, painting at, 222. 
 
 United States — 
 
 attitude toward Juarez' gov- 
 ernment, 150-153. 
 
 capital from, invested in 
 Mexico, 243. 
 
 citizens of, in Mexico, 237- 
 238. 
 
 Mexicans in, 236-237. 
 
 railway connections between 
 Mexico and, 228. See also 
 Railways. 
 Uxmal, ruins of, Yucatan, 49. 
 
 Valle Nacional, 227. 
 Velasco, 212, 215. 
 Vera Cruz, 23, 57-66. 
 Viga Canal, the, 165-169. 
 
 Waliace, Lew, "Fair God" by, 
 
 21. 
 Warner, Charles Dudley, 203. 
 Washwomen, 183. 
 WaterfaUs, 213-214, 250. 
 Weights and measures, 207-209. 
 
 %ld 
 
INDEX 
 
 White Lady (Ixtacdhuatl), 143. 
 Women — 
 
 community of, Tehuantepec, 
 
 72-80. 
 Mexico City, 121-122. 
 of west coast towns, 225- 
 
 226. 
 Vera Cruz, 58. 
 
 XocHiMiLco, 164-172. 
 canals, 166, 169. 
 churches, 170-171. 
 floating gardens, 167. 
 possibilities of, 171-172. 
 springs, 169. 
 the Mexican Venice, 173. 
 
 Yaqtji liABOREBS, Yucatan, 44-46, 
 51-56. 
 
 Yucatan — 
 
 henequin production, 39, 42, 
 
 61. 
 imports, 39. 
 laborers, 44-46, 61-56. 
 people, 44-46, 
 ruins, 48-50. 
 seaports, 34. 
 slavery question, 61-56. 
 water and soil, 42-43. 
 
 Zacatecas, 228, 229-233. 
 Zapata, insurgent leader, 267, 268, 
 Zaragoza, General, 179. 
 Zempoaltepec, Mt., 99. 
 Zocalo — 
 
 Mexico City, 119. 
 
 Oaxaca, 97, 98. 
 Zurbarin, paintings by, 132. 
 
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