Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

A Land Without Chimneys.

CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO.

PREFACE.

THIS book is not sent forth to fill a long-felt want; nor does the author hope to convince all his readers to his way of looking at the social and religious problems of Mexico.

As a teacher of modern languages, the author went to Mexico solely for the purpose of mastering the language, but the remembrance of that enjoyable stay allured him like a bird of passage when the spring has come, and so he returned to study the people.

If what he has written will help any one to better understand our next door neighbor, his humble efforts have not been in vain.

CHAPTER I.
THE SAN JUAN VALLEY.

DID it ever occur to the American reader that there lives a people numbering twelve millions, who know not the comforts of the fire-place, nor the discomforts of soot and chimney-swallows? And yet there lives just such a people at our very doors; just across the Rio Grande, in that strange land of romance and fiction, where the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries go hand-in-hand and never unite; where the variation in temperature is less than at any other place on the globe; where an ancient race live among the ruined temples and pyramids of a race they know not of; where the traveler finds mouldering ruins of hewn stone engraved with figures and animals that have no likeness anywhere else, except amid the ruins of Egypt; it is here you find the Land Without Chimneys. The land of Montezuma; the spoil of Cortez; the treasure-house of Spain; the modern Mexico, where fact and fancy so mingle with romance and fable, that we hardly know when we have reached historical data.

When the Spaniards reached Mexico in 1518, they found that the Toltec history, done in picture-writing, was the most reliable source of information obtainable in this strange fairy-land.

From these idiographic paintings we learn that the Aztecs, or Mexicans, entered the valley from the north about 1200 A. D. Before the Aztecs came, the valley was occupied by the Chicimecs, and before they had pitched their tents around their capital hill, Chapultepec, the Toltecs had ruled supreme.

The Toltecs, being exiled from Tollan, their ancient capital near lake Tulare, wandered a hundred and twenty years, until, in 667, A. D., they came to the bank of a river, where they founded another city which they called Tollan, or Tula, in honor of their ancient capital. The ruins of this ancient city lie twenty-five miles from the city of Mexico. During the reign of their eighth king, a famine drove the Toltecs south, whither many emigrated to Yucatan and Guatemala, where the Toltec language is still spoken. But before the Toltecs, there lived in Yucatan the Maya race, the most ancient in Mexico, whose tradition dates to the year 793 B.C., when they arrived in Yucan by water from Tulapam. Here tradition is lost until we examine the ancient ruins and pyramids of Uxmal and Copan, whose walls are nine feet thick and covered with the finest facades found in America; and then language fails us as we gaze upon the massive walls of the pyramid of Copan, containing twenty-six million cubic feet of stone brought from a distant quarry, whose base is six hundred twenty-four feet by eight hundred nine feet, and a tower one hundred eighty-four feet, built of massive blocks of stone, and surmounted by two huge trees rooted in its mold.

Within the inside are statues and hieroglyphics and inscriptions which tell to the world their history, but they speak in an unknown tongue, which may tell us of their Tulapam on the lost Atlantis. In despair, we give up the riddle of the first people of Mexico, and take a nearer view of the present inhabitants. The country is divided into three parts—the coast region called tierra calienta, where the tropical sun makes life a burden, and engenders that scourge of Mexico, el vomito, or yellow fever.

Midway between the coast and the mountain is the tierra templada, where the mean temperature is 68° F. The tierra fria, or cold country, is the plateau which caps the crest of the Cordilleras, so different from the mountains of the rest of the world that a carriage road was built for eight hundred miles along the crest of the mountains, without the service of an engineer.

Here the mean temperature is 63° F., and on account of the altitude rain seldom falls, and, where it does fall, the porous amygdaloid rocks absorb it so quickly that the plateau is a veritable desert, where the cactus and other thorny plants have taken possession of soil and rock alike. What adds more than anything else to its barrenness, is the utter lack of forest tree or green grass. Everywhere, for miles and miles of landscape, the eye meets only the bare rock and brown earth, with here and there the ever-present cactus and its kind.

What wonder is it that nearly all these plateau people are beggars, when the water for their very existence must be drawn from the locomotive tanks each day as the train passes? Far across the treeless plain they see the smoke of the locomotive, and from every adobe hut and straw-thatched jackal swarm the eager-eyed women, carrying the empty five-gallon cans of the Standard Oil Company, or their smaller ollas of burnt earthenware.

To supply that horde would be to disable the train, so the fireman fills a number and again mounts his engine amid the silent looks of anguish from the disappointed faces that plead more eloquently than words. Yet there are whole townships of this desert, fenced in with stone walls, and upon these haciendas the rancheros grow rich off their herds at the expense of the poor peons, and the source of their wealth is the prickly pear.

The thick, fleshy leaf is both food and water to the starving cattle. Where herds are small, the herder, with a huge knife or machete, cuts the cruel thorns from the leaves or singes them in a great bonfire; but on the vast estates the cattle must, from necessity, get their food without help. It may be curious to know how these leaves can furnish water in a country where it rarely rains. The reason is, the skin is so tough it does not lose any water by evaporation, and it is thus able to carry water a year or more without additional rain. This cactus grows to the height of fifteen feet, with innumerable branches armed with needles nearly as long as your finger, and it bears bunches of fruit about the size and shape of lemons, called tunas. This is the staff of life for the poor people on the plains, and without it, existence on the plateau, for man or beast would be impossible.

But this country was not always a desert. Before the coming of the Spaniards it was clothed in verdure, but “it was not like the plains of Old Castile,” and so the reckless gold hunter turned the beautiful plateau into a Sahara, in which the silver mines now pay from eleven to sixteen dollars a cord for wood, brought on the backs of diminutive burros, and five dollars and seventy-five cents for a hundred and fifty pounds of corn.

It is purely a lack of thrift that no effort is now made to restore the land to its original inheritance. The eucalyptus tree of California has been tried in many places and thrives well, and with proper protection would soon grow a forest. The present wood supply is the mesquite, which never grows taller than a peach tree, and the average size stick of wood it furnishes is but little larger than a beer bottle. Yet, with all its scarcity, the locomotives use it, because coal from the United States costs twenty-one dollars a ton. This wood is packed on the backs of dozens of little burros, and is carried as far as a dozen miles for delivery.

This is a land without chimneys, for two reasons: The climate is not cold enough to require fires, and if it was, the poor people would never be able to purchase wood. The little cooking that is done, is accomplished by little charcoal fires in braziers.

If all this country was a plateau, then my tale would not be told, but there can be no mountains without valleys, and it is these valleys that make Mexico one of the most delightful spots in this country. In the lovely valley of the noisy little San Juan River, rests the beautiful city of Monterey—“King Mountain.”

Situated at the foot of the Sierra Madres, surrounded by cloud-covered peaks, there seems to be not enough room for its seventy-five thousand inhabitants, as it first bursts upon the vision through the towering masts of Yucca palms. It is wedged between “La Silla,” Saddle Mountain, and “Las Mitras,” the Bishop’s Mitre; but this is only the first trick which this clear and illusive atmosphere plays upon the traveler from the lowlands.

The perspective seems unduly fore-shortened, and mountain peaks which are really twenty-five miles away, appear to be within an hour’s walk. After your law of optics has been restored, you discover that no prettier spot could have been chosen for a city than that for Monterey.

Founded three hundred and thirty-five years ago, upon an elevation 1700 feet above the sea, the seasons are so nearly alike that December is as pleasant as May.

In the western part of the city are the homes of the wealthy; beautiful houses in shaded gardens where tropical birds and flowers have their home, and where spraying fountains and living streams of water remind one of the tales of fairy-land. Just beyond these homes is the Bishop’s Palace, the last fortification to succumb to the American army of invasion when the city was taken. Around the palace are many cannon, some half-buried beneath the soil, and one with the unbelched shot still imbedded in its throat where, for fifty years it has lain in mute testimony of that unequal struggle which General Grant called “The most unholy war in all history.”

Across the valley, three miles as the crow flies, are the famous hot springs of Topo Chico, at the base of a mountain of black marble, which, in building material, shows a beautiful stripe of alabastine whiteness.

It was here the daughter of Montezuma and the élite of the Valley of Mexico came to bathe and chase dull care away, after the whirl of the court in the capital city of Tenochtitlan, long before the coming of the white man.

At a temperature of 106° F. the water bursts forth in a heroic stream that bears testimony of the intense fires that hurl it forth.

This reminds us that there is hardly a city in Mexico that has not its hot water baths, and it need not excite surprise, when three of the loftiest volcanoes in the world stand guard over the valley; Orizaba in the east and Popocatapetl and Ixtacihuatl in the south, the highest standing 17,782 feet above the sea.

The water of Topo Chico, after serving the baths, is carried through the valley in irrigating ditches. Leaving the horse-cars which brought us from the city, we are enticed across the beautiful meadows to a grove of palms and tropical flowers, and find ourselves at the lofty walls of an enclosure which at first gives the impression of a penitentiary, but which you afterwards learn is a “Campo Santo,” or cemetery.

We walk around the forbidding walls until we come to a massive iron gate, and through its opening we see a forest of wooden crosses which tell their own tale, but the sexton will tell another.

“A relic of by-gone days was he,
And his hair was white as the foaming sea.”

He had dug a row of twenty-four graves, twenty-three of which were open, but the other was filled to the brim with bones and scraps of clothing taken from the others. A peep into these revealed cross-sections of leg-bones here, two ribs and a hand there, with a jawbone or a vertebra lying in the bottom. The sexton explained that a person may rest in peace for the period of five years, and if, after that time his relatives do not pay a tax on his grave, his resurrection day will come to make room for newer tenants and better renters.

And so on for a hundred years or more they will begin at the gate and dig graves and collect taxes until they reach the rear wall, and then start over. If everybody paid, the yard would remain intact and the sexton would have to start a new farm; but with the average Mexican, the cost of remaining alive is a far more serious question than remaining dead for an orthodox resurrection.

He much prefers using his spare cash during those five years in buying masses from the priest to get the soul of his late departed out of Purgatory, and if he succeeds in that, the bones may go; so every five years he is prepared to see his friend’s lodging aired and let to new lodgers. The wealthy rent tombs which are built in the outer wall, and here they can peep through the glass doors and see the dust of their fathers sifting down upon the ashes of their grandfathers to the third and fourth generation. The sexton was not very careful in removing his renters, and would leave a leg in No. 7 and carry the other remains to 24. I asked him if that would not complicate matters a little in the final resurrection. He assured me that Purgatory was the place to right such small matters, and if the priest was paid enough he would get them all together. That reminds me of a wealthy man who died, and the priest, with an eye to business, called upon the son of the late departed, and impressed upon him the urgency of paying for enough masses to take his father’s soul from Purgatory. The son asked how much would do it. The priest, after a careful calculation said: “He was a pretty hard case and no less than five hundred dollars will move him,” and the son paid the money.

After a while they met again. “And how is my father getting along?” asked the son. “You see,” said the priest, “your father was in the middle of Purgatory and I had to move him a long way, but I have him towards the outer edge now, and I think two hundred dollars more will pass him out.” The money was paid without protest, and this so encouraged the priest that he resolved to make one more deal.

“And how is my father now?” was asked when they met again. “Well, I have him right at the edge of Purgatory with one foot over the line, and I think another fifty dollars will pass him into heaven.”

“O no!” said the son. “You don’t know my father. If he has one foot in heaven, St. Peter and all Purgatory can’t keep him out and so I will save this fifty dollars.”

As the sexton and I talked, a funeral procession entered the gate, consisting of two men and two women of the poorer class. On the head of one man was a dead child stretched upon a board. The other came to the sexton for instructions. He pointed them to a row of thirteen small graves, dug about two feet deep and two of them were filled with the bones from the others.

The child was taken from the board and chucked in, but was found to be several inches too long for the grave, so its head was bent up until the pall-bearer could gouge out enough dirt to admit the body straight, and then enough dirt and bones were raked in to cover it a foot and a half. Meanwhile, the women sat upon neighboring graves, chatting and smoking cigarettes until the grave was filled. Thirteen minutes after they had entered they were gone, leaving the sexton and myself alone with the dead. Within ten minutes another procession entered, preceded by a company of priests with lighted candles, followed by a hearse with a velvet covered coffin. Behind the hearse walked a procession of young men with lighted candles, and then I knew a man was dead, for no women attend the funerals of men.

On entering, the body was taken from the coffin and buried, and the coffin returned to the undertaker. Wood is too scarce in Mexico to buy coffins when a rented one will do as well, and besides, it would give the sexton too much trouble in his impromptu resurrections if he had to dig through hard wood boards.

If you should ask these people why they dig over and over a few acres of enclosed ground when just outside there are leagues and leagues of ground that will not grow anything else but a good crop of graves, they would shrug their shoulders and say: “Quien sabe?”—who knows—with that untranslatable gesture which forbids other question. Should you ask the tax collector, he might look over his balance-sheet and give you an answer about how much it takes to run the government.

Nothing better illustrates the stature of these people than the death of an American. He was a conductor, and the railroad employees determined to give him an orthodox Christian burial, but no coffin could be found long enough, so he was put into one with both ends knocked out. Then came the inspection, and official announcement and permit, and enough red tape to consume two whole days and all the patience of the American colony, and involved enough writing to have chartered the city.

All cemeteries are reached by mule car; and for those who cannot afford a hearse, a funeral car and as many empties as are needed, are always to be had. The funeral car is painted black or white, with a raised dais to support the coffin, and in a sweeping gallop the cortege is soon at the cemetery gates on schedule time.

All head-boards and grave-stones are embellished with the ominous black letters R. I. P. They tell me that is Latin for “May he rest in peace;” but I think they ought to add, “For five years.”

The cathedral in all Mexican cities is the one place of attraction. The one here was used as a powder magazine during the Mexican war, and the walls still bear the grim ear-marks of cannon balls.

The finest church here is Nuestra Señora del Roble, which is old, but seems never to be finished, and thereby hangs a tale.

No church property is taxable here until it is finished, so the astute priests rarely finish one. There are churches here whose foundations were laid three hundred years ago, and as you stand in the grand nave, bits of stone falling around you will be the only evidence of the workmen two hundred feet above.

The stone used is almost as porous and as light as chalk, and responds readily to the chisel for ornamentation, but hardens on exposure. These building blocks are nearly always two feet square, and are built into the wall rough, and with scaffolding built around; the stone-mason, with mallet and chisel, will work for years, creating an ornamentation that is a joy and beauty forever. Patience here is a cardinal virtue, and time has no value whatever, and to their credit, be it said, that these decoraters are artists, and their work is beautiful. A man will begin work on a hundred year job with as much sang-froid as though it was to last a month.

A workman will take an intricate pattern of wall-paper, and, with a paint-pot and brush, will spread that design over ten thousand square yards of surface, and at a distance of ten feet you cannot detect his work from genuine wall-paper. The perspective is so deceptive in one church in Monterey, that you almost run into the rear wall before you are aware that the long aisle is a painted one. You must stand or kneel in the churches, as no seats are provided. One church in Puebla is the only exception. Most of the churches are bedizened with cheap gew-gaws and tinsel, which gives you an impression of a child’s playhouse.

The church of San Francisco is the oldest in town, and its bells were cast in Spain.

A large painting in there which is meant for the piece de resistance, represents Christ with a Spanish fan in his hand, and the Madonna draped in a Spanish cloak of the vintage of 1520. Another represents the Shepherds with violins in their hands looking at the Babe in the manger.

It all reminds me of February 22, in New York, when national proclivities will rise against time and circumstances, and George Washington will blaze with all his calm dignity from the Teuton’s shop window with a huge glass of lager in his hand, and the citizen from County Cork flashes him forth from his aldermanic window with an extra width to his supermaxillary, while Hop Long Quick displays him with his weekly washee washee, sporting a three foot queue.

I suppose all this proves that we think a lot more of ourselves than we do of others, and of our nationality: “My country, may she ever be right, but right or wrong, my country.”

I suppose local color is everything to the ambitious artist, and in making the rounds of the different churches, the amount of dripping gore you encounter in the transit from the Sanhedrin to Calvary is appalling. Were you to meet the dramatis personæ in the flesh, and away from their settings, you would be in doubt as to whether they were just from the foot-ball game, or a delegation from Darktown Alley “After de Ball.” Beyond the city and near the foothills is the modest little chapel of Guadalupe.

Around it is a grove of maguey plants with their long, fleshy leaves, just as inviting to the jack-knife of the Mexican boy as a white beech tree was to you when you were loitering around the country church. Nor were these boys less boys than others, for all over these telltale leaves are inscriptions, some cut “When you and I were boys, Tom, just twenty years ago.” Nor were all these inscriptions outbursts of piety and consecration to the church. Some still told the old, old story, that the lovely Ramona was La alma de mi vidi, mi dulce corizon, the soul of his life and his sweetheart forever.

I sincerely hope Ramona got the letter and rewarded the young man for his splendid sculpturing, but I doubt if he “sculped” all the things I read.

Some were avowals to the service of the Virgin, and I know of no place better calculated to inspire such thoughts of worship than the little chapel of Guadalupe.

Beyond the chapel was a young man quarrying stone, and in his idle hours he had chiseled out a small miniature chapel, about three feet long and similar in design to Guadalupe. Perhaps he was the one who wrote the pious inscription, but he looked just about old enough to have boiled over with that effervescence about Ramona.

While he was at work, I slyly investigated his means of saving grace. Within the little chapel were candles and tinsels of gold leaf and silver, and symbols made of pewter and tin, and bits of broken crockery and other childish playthings, while around it were planted a row of resurrection plants.

This botanical wonder, Selaginella lepidophylla, grows upon the bare rocks, and may be kept a dozen years in a trunk, but when placed in a saucer of water, immediately changes its grey color for green, and unfolds its fronds like a thing of life. When taken from the water it closes up like a chestnut-burr, and continues in its dormant state till water is given it, when it responds every time. This young man having all this paraphernalia as a means of worship may be strange, but what about the church from which he drew his pattern?

What the lower classes here do not know about the bible would fill a book.

The city of Monterey is supplied with water from a famous spring in the heart of the city, which also gives birth to the Santa Lucia, which is crossed by numerous bridges, and is the public bath-house and laundry. A whole company of soldiers will march from the barracks down the principal street, and the first bridge they reach, down they go into the water, and every man will take off his shirt, wade in and begin his laundering. In all likelihood, they will find as many women already in the water enjoying a bath, and they will all sit in the sun and smoke cigarettes together while their clothes dry.

The little proprieties which most people attach to a bath do not seem to trouble these innocent people, especially when an orthodox bath-house charges a quarter of a dollar for what the city gives free gratis for nothing. If cleanliness is next to godliness, these people must be away up in the line of promotion, for from sunrise to sunset, I have seen every rod of this canal a moving panorama of black-haired swimmers, men, women and children, while the banks were white with drying laundry.

The painter who first made that picture about the mermaids sitting upon a rock and combing their raven locks, must have been standing on a

BATHING AT AGUASCALIENTES.

bridge here and got his idea from the Mexican houris trying to dry their hair before they—well, while waiting for their clothes to get dry.

The puenta Purisima is the bridge where a wing of the Mexican army withstood Gen. Taylor’s division. The legend says that the image of the Virgin hovered over the Mexican army and enabled it to do wonders, and that they re-enacted the old story of Thermopylæ. Below the old bridge is a perpetual laundry. A Mexican laundry is a study in white, and when you have mastered the details, it differs not one jot or tittle from all the other laundries in the republic.

Like Mahomet’s mountain, the Mexican laundress always carries her clothes to the water, and rests upon her knees by the brink. She casts a garment into the stream until it is wet, and then wads it upon a flat stone, and soaps it until it is a mass of foam. She then puts it in a wooden tray, such as we use in our kitchen, and rubs all the soap out of it, and immediately empties the water and repeats the process.

If she dips a piece a dozen times, she soaps it just as often, and empties the soapsuds after each rubbing, and never, never uses the soapsuds a second time.

This is very hard on a bar of soap, but the linen is returned to you as white as snow.

There are many Americans in Monterey, and they are trying very hard to implant their American customs upon the country, one of which is the color line in public places.

All the streets are paved with smooth, round cobble stones from the mountain gorges. They are about the size and shape of a butter-dish, and they make just about as smooth a pavement as so many acres of cannon balls would make, buried half way in cement, and meeting about as closely as round objects usually meet.

I can think of no American equivalent, except a corduroy log bridge, or driving across the railroad tracks in a switch-yard.

The gutter is always in the middle of the street, which is a foot or more lower than the rest. An American has gained a concession to lay one street with Texas vitrified brick, and let us hope it is a fore-runner of others. But, come to think of it, it might work a hardship to a time-honored custom; an innovation to some might prove an iconoclast to the church.

It has long been a custom during Passion week and other fiestas, for the priests to prescribe a penance for those who confessed to a sin in thought or word or deed either in the past, present or future tense; and one of the favorite punishments is to require a number of maidens to walk down a street leading to a church, and return, crawling upon their bare knees to the church to be absolved. As they would leave a trail of blood over the cruel stones, some agonized lover would east his zerape before his beloved and beseech her to let him lead it in front of her to the church and spare the laceration; but poor ignorant creatures, they have been taught that this is the only way to have their sins forgiven.

I notice I never see men in these pilgrimages, and it must prove that the men have more hard sense than the women, or else the priests have their own reasons for appointing women only.

Now what would a penance amount to on a San Antonio brick pavement? Just a picnic, no more. It takes a regulation Monterey pavement to draw blood in the first round. I like the Texas innovation, but I shall vote to keep one of these threshing-machine streets for the church and auld lang syne.

In Monterey are a number of smelting works, where the lead and silver ore is reduced to pigs, and here we see the applied difference in wages.

The hardest work in the smelter is to weigh in and deliver to the furnace a thousand pounds of ore every fifteen minutes, and this is not unskilled labor either. The man has a two-wheeled cart into which he must weigh in 600 pounds of ore, and 400 pounds of coke and flux material. Those ores are perhaps fifty yards away at the dump, and if the ore is very refractory, he must mix four or five grades in different proportions. His cart must be always on scales as he goes from one pile to the other, and he must make four trips an hour, and for this he cannot possibly make over a dollar a day, and the regulation wages for even the hardest work is 67½ cents for a maximum, if he is able to make eight full hours.

I saw an Indian boy who had become so expert, he could load his cart with three or four different ores and not miss the amount by more than ten pounds when weighed.

The engines never stop night nor day, except to collect the rich gold dust which collects in the flues. It is a very dangerous, suffocating job, which a white man always gets ten dollars for, and a Mexican five reals, or 67½ cents.

Two railroads pass Monterey. The Mexican Central to Tampico on the Gulf, and the Mexican National to the City; and on the latter we now leave for Saltillo and the battle-field of Buena Vista.

CHAPTER II.
SALTILLO AND THE PLATEAU.

FROM Monterey to Saltillo is sixty-seven miles as the crow flies, 5,300 feet in elevation as the barometer creeps, and fifty rise to the mile as the train runs. Up, up we go with two powerful engines to the train, and the ever-present query, “If the train should break in two, where would I land?”

This is no idle question either, and to reduce possibilities, the Pullmans follow the baggage, the first-class cars next, and the second and third-class last. This is very necessary in steep grades and sharp curves, where the heavy Pullmans with their momentum would always endeavor to strike off segments and chords across the arcs.

Up we go between mountains bare of vegetation, which enables you to see them in their naked grandeur and sublimity. You very soon conclude that the train is on the trail of the little river, and trying to track it out of the canon, and you also discover that it was impossible to have built the road over any other route than the bed of the noisy, fretful little San Juan. We pass through the canon with the little stream first on one side and then on the other, clinging to the side of the mountain by a path that hardly saves the train from destruction by the overhanging rocks, but ever upward. Indeed, railroad men say that when a car breaks loose from the yard in Saltillo, it runs all the way back to Monterey. I don’t believe it. It might come part of the way, but I think before it got half way down that grade, it would leave the track and make the rest of the journey in mid-air, and in considerable less than a mile a minute, too.

On the way up we pass the little puebla of Garcia, where a peak of the mountain has an opening through it, as though some Titanic cannon-ball had crashed its way through there, showing the sunlight on the other side. As we pass, all good Catholics take off their hats and cross themselves. Far up the peaks, tiny spirals of smoke show where the charcoal burners have found some isolated shrubs and are reducing them to merchantable form. In the cleft of the rocks are also to be seen the tuna-bearing cacti, which the half-clad Indian women are gathering for food. At last the grade is surmounted and we reach Saltillo, the capital of the State of Coahuila to which once also was attached the State of Texas.

One of the causes of the Texas revolution was that the Texans had to go to Saltillo, fully a thousand miles from Red River, to attend to their legal business. They asked for a separate state, and at the head of the Texas army they kindly persuaded Santa Anna to grant it. There is great persuasive power in a gun.

The train passes through a long street, lined on both sides with gardens of peaches and apples and oranges and bananas and figs. The altitude is a mile above sea-level, so that the heat of summer is never known, and one must sleep under blankets, even in July and August. It is a favorite summer resort for those who want a climate with no changes whatever. The city has a population of 20,000, but no horse-cars, so you take your foot in your hand and go off to see the town. There is but little to see, but of course there is the Grand Plaza, all Mexican cities have that, and of course the Cathedral faces the Plaza, there is no exception to that rule. The town is 300 years old, but the Cathedral was not begun till 1745, and the main body was completed in 1800.

The towers were begun in 1873, and may continue a hundred years longer. In keeping with the custom of the country, the churches must be as fine as time and money can make them, and the people give both, freely. The Alameda is as beautiful and as restful as one could wish, with fountains and flowers, and birds and trees to drive dull care away. I was honestly trying to do this when a school dismissed near by, and I called several of the “Kids” by to let me look at their text books, which consisted of a Catechism of the Catholic faith, and an Arithmetic. There must have been nearly a dozen boys around me, when all of a sudden they scattered like quails before a hawk, as a watchful policeman headed for us.

I suppose he thought the boys were about to kidnap me and came to my rescue, but he explained that it was a place of rest and pleasure and “Kids” were not allowed to flock there. I flocked by myself for a half hour, and the young ladies’ school dismissed and they all passed, dressed in black, and with bare heads generally, but several had lace mantillas. If ever I wanted to examine text-books, I thought now was the time, but to save my life I could not muster courage to ask that policeman if it was any harm for me to flock anywhere else but on that park bench, and while I hesitated the dream vanished—and so did I. I thought it was time to go see Alta Mira, the baths of San Lorenzo.

Beyond the city limits is a dismantled old fort, a relic of French occupation. It was a very rude affair of sun-dried bricks, and is now occupied by a hermit and a vicious dog who demanded backsheesh. The who refers to both man and beast, for, after looking at the persuasive face and teeth of that dog, you quite willingly pass over the coppers to the old man. I have never heard of the couple using force on travelers, but the argumentative look on that dog’s face showed that they understood each other, and especially since the isolation of the fort encourages the presumption.

Ten miles from Saltillo is the battle-field of Buena Vista, where General Taylor, after a two days’ fight, defeated the Mexicans. After the battle the Mexican women went among the wounded, ministering to the American as well as to the Mexican soldiers.

Whittier has made their name immortal in his beautiful poem:

“THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA.”

which closes with the following lines:

“Sink, O Night, among thy mountains, let thy cool, gray shadows fall;
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all!
Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled,
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon’s lips grew cold.

“But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food,
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.

“Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours;
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers;
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer,
And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air!”

Near the old French fort is a narrow stream of water, precious as all water is on the plateau. Through irrigating ditches it winds around the hill to the valley, through a winding street, among adobe houses, serving each as it passes, as a laundry, fountain or bath-house. The people on the lower course did not seem to care how the water had been treated before it reached them, but they believe in the old saw: “Where ignorance is bliss,” etc.

Along the hard, sunbaked street we pass and look in upon more squalor than was ever dreamed of in a city. The hovels are built of sun-dried brick, with no windows nor chimneys for ventilation. Within is neither floor nor table nor chair nor bed nor any piece of furniture. The women and children and dogs and men all herd together on the bare floor, or at most on straw mats. Neither shoes nor stockings find a place here. The men wear a presentable suit of white cotton or coarse linen, and are bare-footed, or wear a pair of leather sandals on their feet. These are simply pieces of sole leather under the bottom, held on by thongs passed between the toes to the ankle. Every man is his own shoemaker. The women often wear only a chemisette and neither shoes nor stockings, and when they do wear shoes, they wear no stockings. Privacy is absolutely unknown, in this or any other Mexican city, except in the heart of the city or among foreigners, and it requires the utmost watchfulness on the part of the police to keep a semblance of public decency, even in the city of Mexico; and even then, the Indians are tacitly exempt from punishment for infractions. It must not be understood that this assertion includes everybody, but you must remember that five-sixths of the population is classed as low caste or peons, and strong enough numerically to imprint their influence upon every city in the country. Through almost every city flows a stream of water, and in this hundreds of men and women bathe promiscuously. Some cities require some garment to be worn, but while changing clothes and putting on the bathing suit, they are protected only by the blue sky and the Republic of Mexico.

These hovels are the centers of a great manufacturing industry; within, the women are pounding the fibre from the thick leaves of the aloe or maguey, and making brushes, mats, hammocks, rope and twine. The fibre is very much like the unraveled strands of our seagrass rope, and so strong that ordinary wrapping cord must be cut with a knife. The weaving apparatus is crude in the extreme. A post with a windlass and three wooden arms stands in the ground, and a boy turns the windlass. A man walks backwards with a basket of fibre hanging from his neck. Having fastened a thread to each of the arms of the crank, he slowly feeds each lengthening strand as it twists around the windlass. In ten minutes he can twist a thread fifty feet long. The threads are woven any desirable size, the most common being such as is used in making hammocks. As the husband prepares the thread, the wife weaves the mats or hammocks, and goes off to the market to sell. Within such hovels, all the manufacturing of Mexico is carried on, with no machinery anywhere. Of course, without wood, steam is impossible, and water power there is none.

Saltillo is famed for one thing above all others, and that is the beauty of its zerapes. A zerape is a cross between a cloak, a blanket, a shawl and a mat, because it is used for all these. It is the one garment a Mexican prizes next to his hat, the sine qua non of his attire. The zerape is a hand-woven blanket, with figures and colors that would make Pharaoh’s adopted son turn green with envy. They are woven and worn all over Mexico, but those made in Saltillo are a thing of beauty and a joy forever, to the happy possessor. When the Mexican starts out in the morning, his zerape is folded across his shoulder with the fringed ends nearly touching the ground. If he is hunting work, or going to work, or walking for pleasure, or holding up the sunny side of a street corner to keep it from falling down, the zerape is always there. If he sits down, he either sits upon that zerape or fondly folds it across his lap. When night comes, if he has a home, he spreads that zerape on the dirt floor for his bed. If he has no home, a nice soft corner of the stone pavement is carpeted with his zerape. When morning comes, he goes through the same programme. Many slit a hole through the center and stick their heads through. Those who cannot buy, take an old salt sack and rip it up, and presto! a zerape. In the Torrid Zone on the coast, when the hot sun melts the asphalt pavements, an Indian may be seen comfortably smoking his cigarette, his head covered with a woolen sombrero weighted down with silver ornaments, and several yards of woolen zerape covering his reeking body.

Ephraim is wedded to his idols. If the men are wedded to the zerape, the women are equally inseparable from the rebosa. The rebosa is a shawl, nothing more—that is from appearance, but with the Mexican women and girls, it is second self. The common gray, cotton article is called a rebosa, the finer black article is a tapalo, while the lace fabrication is a mantilla, but it is of the rebosa that we now speak. Hats nor bonnets are ever worn by the women at any time or place, the rebosa is used instead. It is drawn across the brow until the ends hang down below the waist, then one end is thrown across the opposite shoulder, protecting the neck and making a drapery both picturesque and pleasing. Sometimes she wears it around her shoulders as a shawl. If she has a baby, she lets the slack out in the back, loops the youngster in it and takes a half hitch with the ends in front. It is an every day sight to see caravans of women come to town with large baskets of fruit on their heads, and the black-eyed youngsters tied in the rebosa and peeping over the mother’s shoulder. When the mothers sit by the roadside to rest the “Kids” are not unwrapped, but they usually keep the peace until released.

The rebosa is the first garment a girl learns to wear, and I might add, until she is quite large it is often the only one. The most remarkable thing about it is, they never cease wearing them. Peep into these hovels, and every woman and girl child will be sitting listlessly on the stone floor, or busily at work with head and ears tightly wrapped up, their sparkling eyes and pleasant faces alone showing. But draw a camera on them, presto! every face is instantly covered. In walking, one or both hands is always engaged in holding the folds under the chin, as no shawl pins are used. The girl of fashion is a combination of painted face, India inked eyebrows and bella-donna eyes, but the ordinary middle class girls have rare beauty sometimes, and a series of faces would make “mighty interesting reading,” but no camera that I have seen can get their faces, unless covered with a rebosa.

The prevailing color of rebosas is as much a distinctive emblem of caste, as any rule in the social decalogue. No high caste woman would dare be seen with a gray rebosa, and though a low caste might be able to buy one of the more costly black ones, I have never seen one do so, and the observance of these social adjuncts is as unchanging as the laws of the Medes and Persians.

Saltillo as seen from the rear is disappointing. Most towns are painted white, but here the dull, wearied-looking sun-baked adobe houses are not pleasing. We visit a high school for young ladies and wonder that all this youthful beauty can bide this dull town, and that reminds me that there is not a mixed school in all Mexico, even the kindergartens being separate. You do not need to visit the primary schools, as you can hear all you wish a block away. The noise that first greets you will remind you of the last inning at the base-ball park when everybody is asking who killed the umpire. There may be three hundred children and each one is studying at the top of his voice, if voices ever have top and bottom, and the priests are stalking among them. The catechism is the first book placed in the hands of the child, and his duty to the church, the priest and the pope, are the first lines he ever learns. This statement will help make plain some other things I shall say later about the religious status of the country.

In the early gray of the July morning, with the chilling fog settling all around us, we draw our heavy wraps about us and leave with no regrets Saltillo, “The Stepping Stone.” We have indeed stepped upon the plateau, and for a hundred and fifty miles the track is as straight as a carpenter’s rule. What a monotony! Desert, yucca palms, cactus, dust. Not a living thing but cactus. No birds, no insects, no rabbits, no snakes—nothing that breathes claims this for a home. The railroad authorities did not plan this road for the beauty of its landscape, but for the economy of building. Ten thousand feet above sea-level lies the back-bone of the Cordilleras, and the plain is as level as a floor.

For twelve hundred miles a carriage can travel here without making a road, so while the journey is disappointing to the tourist, the railroad company pats itself on the back for long-headedness.

Away in the distance we see a tiny curl of white dust no larger than a man’s hand, and reaching to heaven. That is the sign of the burro pack-team bearing their bundles of fagots for the hungry maw of the locomotive. Poor little donkeys, not weighing more than three hundred pounds, without bridle or saddle or harness or halter, and without food except as they can argue with the thorns and thistles by the wayside, follow, follow forever the narrow trail to the wood-pile by the railroad track, drop their burden and return.

Surely the earth is round to the donkey. When he was no larger than a kid, he followed his mother along the same trail until he got large enough to carry a pack-saddle himself. That wearied, discouraged look he has always had, even to the twentieth generation. It is a part of his inheritance. He never had any frisky colt days in a pasture, nor did he have to “be broke” to harness when he reached the state of Coahuila and donkeyhood. In fact he was never born, but like Topsy “just growed up,” a burden-bearing burro. From the Rio Grande to Yucatan, he has gridironed the country and impressed it with his stamp. He and his companions have trailed, Indian file, loaded to the guards with silver ore, until his sharp little feet cut the trail so deep that his burden was raked off by the banks. He then started a new trail by the side of that until his little legs are out of sight in the trails cut by his feet in the solid rock; and then repeats, until you may count twenty or more little parallel gridiron paths for hundreds of miles. He has worn through solid rock in a dozen parallel paths, and only the final recorder in the burro paradise can tell how many weary journeys he had to make to write his name so well.

Neither the trolley car nor the bicycle will ever make his shadow grow less; he is a part of the country, as indispensable as water itself. While the Indians load the tender with wood, I follow the fireman and brakeman into the chaparral. They have a pail of water, a wicker basket, and a long stick with a string lasso on the end, and are hunting tarantulas. Being something of a naturalist myself, I was well acquainted with tarantulas, and I promptly told them I had not lost any tarantulas, and if they had nothing better to lose than tarantulas, they needed guardians. To those who have not a speaking acquaintance with his vitriolic majesty, I will say it is a huge hairy spider that will cover the bottom of a tea-cup, and when placed in a saucer is able to grasp the edge all round, so great is the spread of its claws. It is very vindictive and can leap up to a man’s face when making close acquaintance. In Texas I have known its bite to kill a person in twelve hours. I saw one catch a chicken under the wing, and the chicken fell within one minute.

However, I joined the hunters. We first looked for a hole in the ground, and as the hole denotes the size of the tarantula, only the larger ones were sought. When a hole about the circumference of a half dollar was found, one man guarded that with the stick and basket, while the other sought the outlet, for they always have two entrances to their homes. When it was found, the water was poured in, and out he came into the lasso placed over the other hole—and is caught dangling at the end of the stick. What is he good for? To sell. The Mexican is the greatest gambler this side of Monte Carlo. Tomorrow is the fiesta of his patron saint, and he will celebrate. As every one chooses a saint to his liking, and churches and towns do likewise—there is scarcely a day in the calendar that is not somebody’s saint day. Tomorrow he will “knock off” from work, go to the bull-ring and bet his money on the bull or the man, and whichever one gets killed, he is so much loser or winner. He goes to the cock-pit and stakes again, and a bird soon spears another through with his gaff; but a tarantula fight! Bravo! that is a sport royal. In the bull-ring, the bull sometimes gets wounded and bellows to be allowed to go home to his mother. In the cock-pit, a bird gets a gaff pinned through his upper works and decides to settle the fight by arbitration; but a tarantula, Caramba! they simply eat each other up. The only way you can lose money is that the other fellow’s cannibal will eat yours first.

The engineer blows his whistle and calls us in, and we trail again through the white dust to Catorce, a hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies, only no crow ever flies over this Sodom and Gomorrah. Catorce means fourteen, as the mines were discovered by a band of brigands numbering fourteen. You get off at the station and see nothing but a station and three or four pack trains of burros that have just brought in a load of silver. Follow their gridiron trail, and eight miles further you come to Catorce, a city of from ten to twenty thousand people, according to the output of silver, and these people have never heard the rumble of wheels. Ore was first found here in 1790, and for thirty years the silver output was over three million dollars yearly.

There are hundreds of these mines here, and the drainage tunnel of the San Augustin mine runs into the mountain more than a mile and a half and cost a million and a half dollars. Up, up you climb the rocky sides of the mountain, but there is no other way to reach Catorce, and when there, you are in one of the richest spots on earth, where the ore often assays $15,000 to the ton. The streets run forty-five degrees one way, and I suppose they ought to run the same coming back, but if you let go your hold on the street corners, you would fall out of town so fast you could not measure the angle. The only level place in town of course has a plaza and a very fine cathedral. I have made a similar statement several times, which needs no repetition. Whenever you enter a Mexican town you will always find “A very fine plaza and a very fine cathedral.” That copyright phrase will fit anywhere, with sometimes a modification of very and a change of church for cathedral.

Catorce is the last town in the temperate zone. A few miles beyond, standing solitary upon the desert like Lot’s wife in the geography, is a pyramid erected by the railroad company. It marks the exact line of the Tropic of Cancer. On the north the legend reads:—

TROPICO DE CANCER.
ZONA TEMPLADA.

on the south,

TROPICO DE CANCER.
ZONA TORRIDA.

Out of respect to your early teaching in geography you ought to perspire and be exceeding warm in the Torrid Zone, and see all kinds of gay-plumaged birds and jungles of flowers, but the hammer of the iconoclast has shattered one of your long cherished dreams.

The sun was shining upon a landscape over which clouds never hover. You pull your overcoat around you on this cold July day, and look through your closed windows for the other canard—the landscape. The landscape is all there according to the book, and for that you are thankful, but how changed! As far as the eye can reach and ten times farther are beautiful rock-colored rocks, and dust-colored dust and thorny thorns and dust-hidden sky. Where are the flowers? Never were any. And the birds? Never will be any. Not a blade of grass nor a chirp of insect. For forty miles around, or as far as the eye can reach is the dry, parched dust, and the chaparral, sere and yellow.

After a hundred and fifty miles of desert, how welcome is the oasis! Bocas is its name, and the last stopping-place before we reach the great city of San Luis Potosi.

Las Bocas is a fine hacienda and recalls old feudal times along the Rhine. Here is a fine old castle with its walled enclosure, its beautiful arched bridge and its herds and flocks and gardens and retinue. By the railroad track is a distillery for making liquid lava from the aloe or maguey plant, which is sold under the name of mescal for the purpose of making men drunk. Those who know say it will eat the lining out of a lead-pipe stomach. I saw a case of delirium tremens which it is guaranteed to give, and I can only liken it to a caged hyena after Lent.

Away in the distance is the snow-white trail of a stone wall, which winds its tortuous path many leagues away to encircle the hacienda de Las Bocas, while within its bounds and feeding upon the rocks and thorns are the thousands of cattle that maintain its opulence. How that kind of food can work such wonders is beyond my ken. When I was in school I learned that cattle have four stomachs. I think one would be quite sufficient for all the food a cow can get from a cactus bush, and a couple of millstones might be helpful in digesting the rocks. No one told me that the rocks were positively a part of the bill of fare, but I pointed to ten miles of rocks enclosed by a wall and asked a man why they fenced in the rocks, and he said it was a pasture, and he ought to know, as he is a native and to the manner born.

Four hundred and seventy-five miles from the Rio Grande, and the only trees seen were upon the little oases watered by tiny streams. We leave the plateau and climb the mountain into the city of San Luis de Potosi.

CHAPTER III.
SAN LUIS POTOSI.

AND no more satisfactory city can be visited than San Luis, situated in the crater of a fertile valley, while its suburbs extend to the rich silver mines of the mountains which give it name.

The mines have been worked over three hundred years, but the city is only two hundred years old. The mines were discovered to the Spaniards by a pious monk, who named them Potosi, because of the resemblance to the mines of Peru.

Three million dollars annually, are mined. A very unusual thing for Mexico, the railroad station is in the heart of the city. Seventy-five thousand people make their home here, and the law requires all houses to be kept freshly painted; and what a restful revelation it is, with asphalt pavements swept clean each night, and hotels that make a traveler glad. The only drawback to complete happiness is a lack of water. Most cities here draw their water from the mountains in aqueducts, but San Luis has outgrown its supply.

At the public fountains, a stream of water-carriers by hundred stand patiently in line to fill their vessels from the tiny, discouraged stream trickling from the Dolphin’s mouth, and the police stand guard to see that all are served in the order of arrival. All day and all night this pitiful waiting goes on forever. It is like buying tickets for the Symphony concerts in Boston, where the people come before day and buy choice places in the long line of earnest waiters. The water is free, but the successful ones sell to those in the city who do not care to enter the crush, or to the hotels and wealthy ones who can buy. All kinds of vessels are used, but the preference is given to the five-gallon cans that brought kerosene into the city.

With two of these fastened to a shoulder yoke, the men peddle the water at three cents a can. With the women, the favorite is the large Egyptian model earthenware called olla. With this poised gracefully on one shoulder and elbow, and the opposite hand held across the head to balance, it completes one of the most picturesque scenes so common here. Rebecca at the Well has simply stepped out of the old picture book and assumed her ancient calling. The feature of the profession, however, is a man with a nondescript wheel-barrow which no man can describe.

Rainfall is quite plentiful here, but the porous amygdaloid rocks can not hold it. At present an American citizen is boring an artesian well, and the interest displayed by the citizens is remarkable. All day long hundreds of anxious watchers will stand around the drill, evincing the same interest we used to show at our boarding house when the first strawberry short-cake of the season was cut, and the anxious boarders were watching to see who would get the strawberry.

The burro train has lost its hold upon San Luis. For three hundred years all the silver was carried to the sea, two hundred and seventy-five miles away, by burros, but now, with two railroads, things have changed. The Mexican National leads to the capital, the Mexican Central to the bay of Tampico.

Here are many fine buildings to see; the Governor’s palace, palace of justice, State capitol, the museum, the library with a hundred thousand volumes, cathedral, and the churches of Carmen, Merced, San Augustin, San Francisco, Military College, and the Teatro de la Paz, one of the finest opera houses in the country.

As in all the cities, the street ears start from the main Plaza, and from here you may visit Guadalupe, Tequisquiapan, the baths of La Soledad, Axcala and Santiago.

In the rainy season, the street cars bear this legend: “There is water in the river.” As a matter of course, the cars do a land-office business as long as the water lasts. The cars lead to the Paseo, a beautiful shaded avenue two miles long, asphalt pavements, and fountains at either end, with the usual scramble for water.

At the extreme end is the church of Guadalupe, with two tall towers, and a fine clock presented by the king of Spain, in return for the gift of the largest single piece of silver ore ever taken from a mine—the mine of San Pedro.

The city of San Luis Potosi is building a hall that is to be the eighth wonder of the world. It has cost millions and will cost millions more. Seven years ago a dozen skilled stonemasons from Pennsylvania were imported to do the ornamental carving on the front. One Fourth of July a member of the party got drunk and killed a Mexican. He was tried and condemned to be shot.

Then arose the certainty that with him in the grave there would be no one to do the fancy carving on the City Hall, so it was decided to keep him at work and shoot him when he had finished. Every day this workman hangs like a fly against the great white wall and pecks away at gargoyles and griffins’ heads, while a file of soldiers stand in the streets looking at him.

His life ends with his job, and the Mexicans say he is the most deliberate workman in the world. At the present rate of progress, by the best obtainable calculations, the front of the City Hall will be sufficiently scrolled and carved about the middle of 1950. All the churches contain valuable paintings.

The most remarkable thing about these cities, there is no noise. There is no steam, no manufactories, no wagons, no drays, and as the people go without shoes, there is no noise of any kind. You may sit on the busiest street here and close your eyes, and feel all the quiet and comfort of a cemetery. Those who like to sleep late in the morning can better appreciate this. The days and nights are of equal length, and you could stop in the most populous hotel in the city and sleep until ten o’clock in the day. No bell-boy, no breakfast bell; just quiet. The one exception to noise is the market place; it was made for noise, and is different from all the others in the country.

In other cities there are several market places which relieve the congestion, but here there is but one. Before daylight the hubbub begins and lasts till noon, and the main building is soon crowded, and its overflow spreads to the four streets which pass it. There are no passing vehicles, so from curb to curb are hundreds of women sitting flat upon the ground with their gray rebosas around their heads, and their scanty wares spread about. They sell everything, and the streets are redolent with unknown and unsavory odors from the charcoal braziers, from which the designing maid or matron offers her concoctions to the unsuspecting wayfarer.

Of course you try some of these experiments; you do not know what you are eating, but it never kills. This compels me to say that very, very few people eat at home, but go to the market for their meals, going from one stall to the other. Another market feature, green corn is always offered cooked, and the same is true of sweet potatoes. Some people buy their supplies and take them home to be cooked, but green corn and potatoes never. They are both boiled with their jackets on, and if a vendor has a bushel, he or she boils the whole and stacks it up on the pavement, and it may be five or six hours later, the purchaser buys an ear and hulls the grains off and eats his dinner with no salt or accompaniment whatever.

The market is never closed for three hundred and sixty five days in the year. In many stalls are wholesale dealers who supply the retailers. In unloading the corn or grain to put it in bins, there will be half a dozen women or children in the dust under the cart, scrambling for the grains as they fall from the sacks. When the cart has gone, they winnow all the dust through their hands looking for the missing grain.

These market gatherings are the simon-pure article of the native element, unadulterated by foreign influence. Here are Indians from the mountains, peons from the haciendas and peasants from the surrounding country and the gentry from the city, all hobnobbing together. The usual dress of these women vendors is startling. The Indians wear a string of beads around their necks and one or two yards of coarse cloth fastened wherever it will fit best, and they are dressed up. The peasants wear a string of beads and a chemise which commences too late above and stops too soon below, and all are barefoot. The high-caste women all dress in American or French styles, except that they wear no head gear but their own black hair, and they wear the most ill fitting high-heel, needle-pointed shoes that are made. The national color for Spanish and Mexican women is black. Meet a hundred ladies at a time, and every dress without exception is jet. I rather think it is vanity. We put salt on watermelon to enhance its sweetness by comparison, and so with black hair, black dress and fair skin, the contrast I think was the final end sought.

Elite society never appears on the street here till six o’clock, unless a fiesta or church service calls it out; and before that hour, what careful preparation is had? The hair is usually braided and let alone. A quantity of India ink along the eyebrows make a black en rapport with the hair, and a little belladonna in the eyes will add a sparkle that will wither up men’s souls and scatter them prone at her feet—metaphorically speaking, and when those cheeks have been kalsomined—I mean whitewashed—that is—painted, if the dear ladies will spare my life for mentioning it, and when mi-lady has thus performed her renovation—I mean toilet, and placed her diamonds on her neck where they will show best, and wrapped as to her shoulders with the diaphanous mantilla and steps under the electric light, I tell you she is—is indescribable.

The dress of the men of the lower class is just a kaleidoscope, that’s all. Some of the Indians are dressed like their women, in their long hair and a strip of cloth hung where it hangs the best. The high top straw sombrero or the Panama hat with a string under the chin is the prevailing style, although the more costly woolen hat is represented. White cotton and brown linen constitute the dress goods.

The usual cut of coat is a short jacket or jumper. Others wear a long sack coat, and instead of buttoning it they gather the two corners together and tie them in a knot. This distinctive style has a kind of freemasonry importance in which I was never initiated. Then his pantaloons are white, with the bottom widened immensely. The shepherds have a style all their own. They have a buckskin jacket cut short, and buckskin pantaloons cut long, with a row of buttons on the outside. Then he takes his knife and slits the legs inside and out, from the knee down, then he gathers up the ends and tucks them under his belt, and depends upon his underwear for effect on dress parade. He always scores. Some people might say he looks badly, but with his clan he is in very correct form and why should you object?

The porters, or public drays dress in white cotton, with one leg of their pants rolled up to the knee, leaving the leg bare.

Around his neck he wears a large badge like a policeman’s, with his official number, showing that he is licensed to carry packages, from express money orders to upright pianos. He is the only express wagon here, and is absolutely reliable. He will shoulder your Saratoga and trot a mile without resting. I recall the case of one who stumbled with an American drummer’s trunk on his back, and when the street commissioners gathered up his remains, they were spread over two square yards of pavement. P. S. the trunk was not injured.

Four of these cargadors will carry your piano to any part of the city. For moving household goods, they have vans made on the plan of a hospital stretcher, with a man in the shafts at each end, and a rope passing over his shoulders to the shafts, and they will carry a dray load each time. Two dozen chairs by actual count is what I have seen one man carry. The mule has been promoted to the street car, out of respect to the two-legged express wagon.

The dress of the cow-boy and rural police is something to admire. A high sombrero, costing from twelve to fifty dollars, weighted down with monograms and silver ornament.

Leather or buckskin suit with silver buttons from boots to neckband. Silver spurs and silver bridle bits. Saddle whose every piece of ornament is solid silver, a horse-hair lariat, and if he is a Rurale, a rifle, and he sits his horse like a centaur.

The dude is in a class alone, but he counts one when on dress parade. A tall, black sombrero with silver ornaments. Scarlet jacket, reaching to the waist, and sprayed with silver braid in fantastic designs. Buckskin pantaloons, flaring at the bottom and silver buttons all the way up, and along-side a series of cross-section slashes, interwoven with a beautiful ribbon from spur to waistband. Silver spur and bridle bit, a saddle worth as much as the horse, and a bright nickel-plated revolver buckled around his waist.

At the fashionable hour for promenade, he mounts his horse, and slowly rides over the town and graciously permits the populace to admire him. I think he ought to be knighted for his liberality. Most people who go to that much trouble to shine, generally make you buy a dollar theater ticket for the pleasure of looking at him, strains his constitution and bylaws showing off, and cannot ride a horse at all.

But commend me to the Mexican dude. After he has set the town agog, he turns up a certain avenue, which contains a certain house, projecting from which is a balcony, in which dwells the only girl in town, and, after he has passed in all his silent glory, he throws bouquets at himself for the wonderful impression he has made, and then goes home to undress. Earth cannot hold him much longer. I fear his own ardor and faith in himself will finally sublimate him, but our loss is heaven’s gain. The children; there are no children; they are just vest-pocket editions of old folks. Usually they are dressed in their innocence, but that is a quality of goods that does not last long here. When a boy is old enough to wear anything else, it is exactly like his father’s, tall sombrero, pants that strike his heels, and a red sash around his waist. Suspenders are not worn here. When a girl is no longer innocent, she dresses in a rebosa. By wrapping it around her head it reaches her feet. They don’t have much time to be little for they marry at eleven and twelve. The upper class men, of course dress as Americans, but Paris sets the fashion in Mexico always. All these things you see at the market in San Luis Potosi, but you see them in hundreds, while I have only described them as individuals, and have not half turned the kaleidoscope yet.

The streets must be all vacated by eleven o’clock at night, and when the hour for closing has arrived, nothing is locked up. The thousand and one vendors have no care for their goods. A piece of canvas is spread over them and a brickbat placed on to keep the wind from interfering, and they go home.

The policeman does the rest—he never sleeps. Crime does not pay in Mexico. The laws are as swift as a bolt of Jupiter. A person is arrested this morning, tried and shot before night. They waste no sentiment on criminals and they are too expensive to feed.

Another curious custom is, the money received during the day must always be in sight. A wooden tray on top of a pile of goods holds the receipts of the entire day and not a piece is hidden. The taxation law is very rigid, and a certain per cent. of all sales is collected by the city, and the inspector must be always free to look at your sales and figure on his per cent.

As hard as the law is on poor people, you never hear them complain. They respect the laws even though they do not like them. Just imagine an American counting up square and even with a tax collector on a day’s sale! When Bellamy gets his colony in working order and invites me to come and see the wonder of the twentieth century, that is the sight I want to see.

The wearing of pistols here is not a sign of revolution. Probably it is not loaded, and a Mexican would not shoot you for anything. If his liver was out of order to the extent of wanting your blood, he would take his knife and reduce you to sausage meat, but shoot you, never. That is not his style. A pistol is as much an article of full dress as a pair of gloves would be in America, or a tin sword is to our military organizations.

When Mexico had her monthly revolution, and when bandits used to come in and take the town, every man had to go armed in order to find himself after the cyclone; but she has comparative peace now, yet wearing pistols for a hundred years has made it quite a habit. I went on an excursion with a party of harmless looking Mexicans, and we tried to sit down on a bench, and every man and boy of them had to unload his cannon pocket before he could sit down—and the other fellow too.

At your work, the law supposes you to be unarmed, but in making a journey, though it be the length of a street, you are allowed to arm against bandits. On every first and second-class car, ten out of every dozen men will carry huge revolvers, but you might live there for months and never hear of a person getting shot.

In this great city, everything is so quiet you are constantly enquiring if anything has happened, or is happening, or has any likelihood of happening; you cannot understand the absence of noise and bustle.

It finally dawns upon you that the native never hurries. He has mastered the ethics of rest, he never exerts himself. He does so delight to sit himself down long and often and ponder over the wear and tear of the foreigner. The state feels as he does about it, so it has placed comfortable seats everywhere, where the native can rest. Just rest. He never “Hellos” to an acquaintance across the street; if he wishes to speak, he motions with his hand. All this saves wear and tear, and by this means, the nation has saved vast stores of conservated energy to use in the next world. He has been saving energy for four hundred years and has never let any of it out.

There is no “hello” on the street, and no vehicles, and everybody is barefooted, so there is no noise. They don’t “hello” in the telephone. They talk some sweet, musical Spanish in it that is a real pleasure to listen to. Instead of thundering back “Who’s that?” he sweetly says “Quien habla?”—Who speaks?

The national watchword is, “Never do to-day what you can possibly put off till to-morrow.” An excursion agent went to a large hotel and asked what were the rates per day. “Four dollars,” said the major-domo. “But my party contains seventy people, what rates do we get for the party?” “Four dollars and a half each, more trouble.” The same in buying goods. The man who buys wholesale quantities has to pay for the extra trouble he causes the clerks.

“Poco tiempo,”—wait a little, is the national leveler for all difficulties and broken contracts. You order a suit of clothes to be delivered tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes—neither do the clothes, You get down your dictionary and hunt up all the cuss words you can command, and hurl them at that tailor, and expect to see him shrivel up before you. Does he? Not a shrivel! He offers you a cigarette, carefully rolls one for himself and forces wreaths of smoke through his nostrils, and turning to you says: “Poco tiempo”—what’s your hurry? Manana will do, tomorrow, tomorrow, manana comes, and also another poco tiempo.

You engage a guide and want to go see a place you have come a thousand miles to see, and want to start this afternoon. “Well, why not manana? You Americanos do hurry through life so!” He works two days, carving a wonderful cane he sells for a quarter. His two days tiempo count for nothing. He lives in yesterday and today, but never in tomorrow. He will wait for the millennium but will never go to meet it. He will never hurry from the comforts of today into anxieties of tomorrow. Manana, the panacea for all ills, the Nirvanah.

The language of gesture has a new meaning here. When a person wants you to approach him, he frantically motions you away. When you see your lady acquaintance across the street, and she motions with her fingers and thumb for you to come to her, you must read it backwards because she does not mean it, she is simply recognizing you.

When ladies meet and re-enact the great American humbug of miscellaneous kissing, it is always given and received on the cheek. When two gentlemen meet, they rush into each others arms and rapidly pat each other on the back with the right hand, and finally shake hands, and if they meet each other a dozen times a day, they effusively shake.

At the railway station, the departing friend embraces, pats, shakes, and jumps aboard, If the train is delayed, he gets out again and talks until the conductor cries, “Vamanos!” then he goes through the same performance again with each of his dozen friends, and when half a dozen lugubrious groups are similarly engaged, the conductor simply waits until they have finished.

Indeed, to such an extent does this leave-taking interfere with business that signs are placed up asking the people not to delay business by their long salutations.

At Guanajuato the following sign is tacked up:—“Se suplica a los pasajeros eviten las despididas y saludos prolongadosque retarder la marcha de los carros.”

In all places the innate politeness and courtesy of the people show a study for your comfort. In walking, your Mexican friend insists that you walk on the inside next the wall, while he walks next the street. In accepting an invitation for a carriage drive, you must enter first and accept the rear seat; but if a lady invites a gentleman he is not supposed to accept the rear seat when offered. After the drive your host will alight first and assist you. In the street car, the gentlemen always offer their places to ladies, and salute all passengers when entering and leaving the ear. People have said they also shake hands with the driver, but I do not believe all I hear.

When you are introduced to a gentleman, he tells you his house and all his belongings are yours, giving you the street and number, and says: “Now you know where your house is.” If you admire his horse or his paintings or his wife, he says: “Take them, they are yours.” To be sure you are not expected to take him too literally, but it shows that the French are not the only people who claim politeness as a national trait.

If you are invited to his house for refreshments, you are to precede your host on entering, but he will precede to the door when you signify your readiness to depart.

The salutation on the street is “adios,” the equivalent of the French adieu, but “buenos dias,” “buenos tardes,” and “buenos noches” are also used for good morning, etc., and are always used in the plural. Why, the deponent sayeth not. One of the adjuncts of an introduction, is for the native to offer his cigarette case; and to refuse the invitation to smoke, is to also refuse the introduction, and this little custom nearly brought trouble upon the writer’s head. His early education had been sadly neglected, and the manly art of smoking had never been taught him, so he was forced to practice deception on his kind friends to keep the peace. The deadly cigarette is rolled in the thin innershuck of the Indian corn, and holds its shape whether filled or not, so I filled my pocket with empty cases. When my new-made friend asked that I smoke with him the pipe of peace, I replied cordially, “Sí Señor,” and took the proffered cigarette, and with the same hand felt in my pocket for a match and exchanged the loaded cigarette for a harmless one, and, presto! I am in good form and all goes merry as a marriage bell. He tells me his house, his sisters and all he has are mine for ever, and I quietly add another item to my million dollar possessions. In one summer I have acquired more wealth and real estate and beautiful maidens by actual gift, than Jay G. and Brigham Y. acquired in a lifetime.

Already I have become a bloated aristocrat, and daily receive and give away haciendas that cover nine square leagues of land.

The custom-house officials already have their eye on me, and are even now figuring on the dividends they will declare when I attempt to leave the country, but every bitter has its antidote, so I am congratulating myself on the change of dates. A few years ago I was in this country when each state collected its customs’ duties from every other state, and that sometimes meant two or three inspections daily. Now things have changed and they inspect only on the border, so I shall have fewer bribes to offer the officials from my newly-acquired millions.

This people’s generosity runs them into bankruptcy. Once a kind friend introduced himself to me, said he always did like my country and people, said he had a beautiful sister named Inez and she was mine. “Take her, señor, she is yours,” also a whole block of buildings. I thanked him profusely and began to take stock of my new possessions, when he said in excellent English, “Have you a loose quarter about your clothes you could lend me to buy a supper?” We had reached a part of the street where there was no light when he made his modest request, and he had his hand on a very persuasive looking knife. I had my eye on him and my hand on a good revolver, so in very choice Texas language I told him I had the drop on him.

After reflecting that he had nearly impoverished himself by enriching me with all his possessions, I took pity on him and gave him a pewter quarter that some of my dear friends had passed on me that very morning. Instinctively his native politeness came to the front, and with hat in hand he kotowed, and in the softest of Spanish he thanked me a thousand and one times, and incidentally let the quarter fall to the pavement to catch the ring of it. Proving counterfeit money here is a regular trade which they all learn.

Hereafter I shall positively refuse all gifts, because I am going to call upon the president, and when I admire the national palace he will of course say: “Take it, it is yours,” and it will appear ungrateful in me to refuse it and mean in me to accept it, because all new presidents have to start a revolution; and then he might not appreciate my motives, and sometimes they do not understand American jokes till a week after their perpetration. This is due to British influence at the embassy.

In the Capital I went once to a hotel, and before the carriage could stop, three flunkies fell over themselves grabbing for my baggage, they were so glad to see me. One got an umbrella, one a camera and one a valise, and ran up stairs to my room to welcome me, and this welcome only cost me twenty-five cents.

The proprietor wrung my hands and then wrung his own, and then spreading them out with a magnanimous gesture said: “This hotel is yours señor, and all my servants; just make yourself at home.” I blushed profusely and told him I certainly appreciated a four-story stone front on San Francisco Street, and I would remember him in my prayers.

After a week of his hospitality, when I offered to treat him to a cigar, he incidentally mentioned that I owed him sixteen reals for each day of my pleasant sojourn. I asked him what for. “Your room, señor.” I told him very forcibly that he told me to make myself at home. “So I did,” said he. “But I never pay board at home,” said I, but the point was lost on him. He was wearing a British hat, impervious to jokes. Next summer he will ask me what I meant.

This is the second time I have got into trouble by accepting largesse, and for the first time I understand what the old Trojans meant when they said: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Hereafter, I shall positively refuse all gifts, and sell off about twenty hotels and villas and haciendas which I have accumulated beyond my needs. That much wealth actually interferes with a man’s rest and the color of his hair.

While in this state of mind and also in San Luis Potosi, I will discourse on the Bill of Fare. I know a Boston friend who would have said William of Fare, but I never could talk Bostonese, and just plain bill of fare will do me, when I am traveling. The Texas lingo just says “Hash.”

CHAPTER IV.
THE BILL OF FARE.

IF Cicero was right in his De Senectute that old age can be enjoyed only by those who in youth preserve their vigor, then the blessings of Nirvanah are the rightful inheritance of Mexico, and she will never lose that inheritance if bustle and hurry will forfeit it.

The hotels are run to suit the guests. When you arrive, you register, and when you next enter the corridor, you see upon the large blackboard your name, room, title, residence, destination, past history and future prospects and whatever else that will be of interest to the public. Now all of that is a labor-saving machine, and saves nerve tissue and wear and tear.

When the newspaper reporter wants news, he steps into the hotel corridor, and the proprietor silently points to the blackboard and goes to sleep again. The reporter reads the bulletin board and goes off and writes a two-column “interview” upon what Mr. A. thinks of Mexico, and you are saved all unnecessary prevaricating. The system is also very helpful to the police in search of lost friends for whom they have formed strong attachments, and for the custom house officials who have word that you passed a certain station and will bear watching. The bulletin board is a very diverting study in black and white for ordinary people, who look for the names of chance friends whom they do not expect, but who might be there. And the porters and curio vendors scan the list and patiently await your arrival on the street and tell you all about yourself. It is a regular bunco steer, but he is different from the genuine article. The g. a. will enveigle you somewhere and beat you on the sly. The Mexican artist stops in the broad sunlight, right in front of your hotel and beats you to your teeth.

He will sell you curios three hundred years old that he made last month, and has been waiting every day since for a person of just about your state of greenness and inexperience to sell to. As soon as he fleeces you, he kindly offers to find other rare bric-a-brac for you that he does not deal in, and will take you to his pal who is working other pastures. After you return to your friends and proudly show your acquisitions, some one who knows, will solemnly diagnose your head for phrenological knowledge. When he has diagnosed to his satisfaction, he will painfully tell you that your bump of Jack-assedness is abnormally developed. He will advise you to learn that little line of Shakespeare, or some other authentic writer that says: “I was a stranger and ye took me in.”

The hotel Bulletin is a great convenience. When you have found your room, you take an inventory, which will serve you in every other city. If you are in the city of Mexico, the inventory includes glass windows (elsewhere, it will be windows with iron bars) an iron bedstead built for one—which may or may not be inhabited—an iron washstand with iron enameled bowl and pitcher, chair, table, half a candle and candlestick. Kerosene is fifty cents a gallon. The scarcity of wood makes itself felt everywhere. The table, door and chair are the only things made from that precious article. Stone floors forever, which may be or may not be carpeted. The walls are decorated with printed placards giving the price per day, week, or month, sin o con comida—without or with board.

The marvel of the establishment is the door-key. A man with such a piece of iron on his person in the States would be arrested for carrying concealed weapons. It is so heavy they have made arrangements to relieve the lodger from carrying it. In the corridor is a keyrack with numbers, and a man stands all day to receive your key when you go out and to return it to you when you come back. The servant goes to him for it to clean up the room, and I have never known a lost or misplaced article under this system. The lock and key are made by hand at the blacksmith shop, and I think are sold by the pound. They are usually fastened upon huge rough doors made in the carpenter shop, and put together with three-inch wrought iron nails, with an inch or more of the point clinched on the opposite side from which they are driven. Of course there are neither fireplaces nor stoves in any hotel, but one, in the whole country.

The hotels are arranged in quadrangles, with the four sides facing an open court, redolent with flowery fragrance and fruits and bird music. Usually a fountain plays in the center, and in fair weather the table is spread here. Every story has an open veranda which looks upon this court. In the City of Mexico, the thermometer hesitates between 65 and 75°F, so when the rainy season is not on, meals can be had in the patio the year around. In the morning you rise at six or ten or any other hour that suits your fancy. No bells rung, no doors shaken, no noise made—you are simply let alone, and when you come, no frowns for your delay.

You ask when is the breakfast hour. “When the señor wishes.” If you go to the table at six the servant brings hot coffee and rolls, as though the whole establishment was wound up to start at that minute. Should you sit down at half past nine, the Señora would declare by all the saints as witnesses that you are just in time and she was looking for you at that moment. You feel that you might be discommoding the establishment, so you ask for the dinner hour. The answer will be graciously given, “From twelve to three-thirty we shall be honored to serve you, and if not at those hours, when the Señor wishes.” Finally you learn that there is no dinner hour, the bell is never rung, the table is never set, but whenever you choose to eat, the servants are to serve you. An ordinary dinner lasts two hours and these meals are what the people live for. The following, for one day may be termed an average:

	BILL OF LADING.
	——
	BREAKFAST.
	Coffee, Bread, Cookies.
	——
	DINNER.
1	Soup.
2	Rice, Radishes.
3	Eggs.
4	Beef, Corn, Snap-beans, Cabbage, Parsnips, Gambane.
5	Steak, Potatoes.
6	Sausage, Chili.
7	Brains.
8	Frijoles. (black beans).
9	Coffee, Fruits, Wine, Cigars.
	* * * * * * *
	——
	SUPPER.
1	Soup, Vermicelli.
2	Mutton, Potatoes, Chili.
3	Mutton Chops, Potatoes, Calabashes.
4	Chicken with Salad, Stewed Bananas, Frogs.
5	Frijoles.
6	Preserves, Fruits, Wines, Cigars.
	* * * * * * *

The stars stand for certain dishes that only Mexicans call for and their name and flavor would never be known to a foreigner. The coffee is grown in the state of Vera Cruz and is excellent, and is made strong and thick. The usual method of serving is to half-fill your cup, and add an equal quantity of milk. It is sweetened with little cubes of white sugar, or the native brown article, called pilonces.

The bread used for breakfast is a species of cooky that represents the baker’s highest art. Nothing approaching it have I found elsewhere. Prosquitos de la manteca it is called, and is made into rings, loops and bows. It is brittle, crisp and sweetened, but not so much as a doughnut. Another kind is prepared in spherical segments and crescents, and is built of numbers of exceedingly thin layers of dough with fruit between, and so frail, that when once broken it falls to pieces in crisp fragments like Prince Rupert’s Drops, the glass phenomena the teacher in Physics used to astound us with. How they can give it the tension to fly to pieces was one of the things that a layman in the cooking art does not imbibe freely. This fabric is very appropriately called pastel. The distinctive feature of the meal is, they give you only one thing at a time in the order I have numbered them, and they come in serials as unchanging as the seasons.

After a few meals you become quite expert in guessing what will come next.

If there are ten plates stacked by you, you know there will be ten courses of one dish each. You have already learned that soup, rice and eggs are the first three, and the next to the last is always beans with coffee closing, so you have only five to guess. Mirabile dictu, the national dish and universal dessert is beans, just ordinary beans, but the people don’t know enough to say ‘beans,’ they spell it frijoles and pronounce it free-hole-ahs. You will notice that they spell better than they pronounce. As a labor of pure love and charity to my fellow countrymen of Boston, I say to them, beware! Your prestige is in danger. As a race of bean-eaters, the Mexicans have about three hundred years the start of you and they have about nine different varieties to practice on, and a different aroma of garlic to fit each one. Besides all that they eat beans. There are thirty-five tribes of Indians in Mexico, speaking one hundred and fifty languages and dialects, but they are all united on frijoles, and they have entered the contest to beat Boston or eat up all the beans.

The national dish is a trinity, composed of frijoles, tortillas and chili. The tortilla is of common stock but aristocratic in association. You sit at the table as a foreigner, and baker’s bread will be set before you, and the Mexican at your left will be the governor of the state and the waiter brings him a stack of tortillas.

The tortillas reduced to United States’ talk is just corn batter cakes. The architectural plan of their building is simple. The corn is put in lime water over night to soak and soften, and the next morning is put on a hot stone, and the women take another stone and pound it into meal; then they take water and make it up into cakes and half cook on a stone and stack them. No salt or grease or any thing but water is put with it. They look like circles of brown sole-leather and, when about three days old are about as tough and tasteless. This is the bread of Mexico, the staff of life. The approved method of eating it, is to spread it out, put on a spoonful of frijoles and roll it into a cylinder, then eat it as though it were a banana.

Chili is the third member of the trinity and is everything else but chilly—it is hot. It includes every kind of green, red and yellow pepper, and is cooked with nearly every article of food, and is cooked by itself and is eaten raw, but is hot always. The natives eat so much chili that it acts as an antiseptic, and I was told by a man who ought to know that in the Mexican war soldiers left on the field lay dead for weeks and could not decay but dried up. That is true now, but it is not chili but altitude that prevents dissolution. Fresh meat cannot spoil nor can vegetables rot. I can stand chili in broken doses, but when they gave me a big green pepper as large as an apple and stuffed with stuffing and dressed with dressing and swimming in an innocent looking sauce and disguised with a name I never heard of before, do you blame me if I thought I had struck a new tropical fruit and cut a respectable quarter of it off and made its acquaintance? Did I raise a howl? Ask of the winds that far around with fragments strewed the sea.

If ever I catch that girl outside of the state of Vera Cruz I shall teach her a lesson. Her name was Guadalupe, but she lacks much of being a model follower of the good saint by that name. She gave me green gourds stewed with water cress or some other green thing I never heard of and called it calabash, and I knew no better. Then she gave me cabbage boiled with bananas and bread fruit, and said that was all the style in Vera Cruz, and finally she invented this other villainy. She thinks I am not accustomed to fine living, but I hope yet to have my revenge. If she crosses the river into Texas, I mean to get her into a railroad eating-house there and compel her to eat some of those terracotta images they sell for ham sandwiches, and when lock-jaw sets in, she will have to keep her mouth shut as long as I had to keep mine open with that loaded green pepper.

When these people get hold of any meat, they roll it up in the tortilla and call it enchilada. They cook light bread after the pattern of a naval torpedo. The loaf is about the size of a Mason’s fruit jar, pointed at both ends like a torpedo, and baked to a crust half an inch thick. Such a loaf would do you bodily injury in the hands of your enemy. I saw so many curious things brought from the invisible work-shop. I found my way back there and told the cook I was in pursuit of knowledge and wanted to see, and veni vidi—I learned. No stove, not an iron or tin or metal vessel of any kind was visible in the land without chimneys.

A wall of earth and masonry is built up, waist high, like a blacksmith’s forge. All around this are port-holes in which the charcoal fire is made, and all over the top of the forge are holes for the cooking vessels, which are made of unglazed earthenware, and this is all. The charcoal makes no smoke, so there is no need of chimneys. Necessity is the mother and grandmother of invention, and these people have jogged along five hundred years without iron vessels, and they cook about as well as some folks I know.

The servants are models of their kind. With their sandaled feet they glide about without noise and do their work without murmur. You leave your soiled linen in their charge and find it on your bed as white as snow. They receive your gratuity with a thousand thanks and profound obeisance, stumble over their own feet to do you some unnecessary service, and as soon as off duty they offer to guide you about the city. They are rarely off duty until they have put in sixteen hours of hard work, then the blanket and stone floor make the only parenthesis between his day’s grind and tomorrow. The serving class is more servile than can be found anywhere. They take more abuse and less wages. Five dollars a month, Mexican money, is high water mark for female servants, and that reduced to American money means forty dollars a year. When spoken to by a superior, they must always answer in a deprecating manner as: “Ever at your service;” “Yours to obey;” “At your command,” etc.

All pretentious houses and hotels are built in quadrangles, with a carriage driveway entering a huge gate to the open court. At night this is closed by a pair of tall gates or doors twelve or fifteen feet high, like those in front of our fire companies, and a servant must lie there all night to answer a summons or to admit a belated lodger. Without changing the clothes he has worn all day, he lies on the soft side of a stone pavement night after night with his zerape or a piece of straw matting under him, and a stone for a pillow. In the interior, women servants often lie on the floor in hallways, in order to be handy should a guest need light or water during the night, or to admit lodgers to upper floors after closing time, and they also sleep in the clothes they wear during the day.

Travelers on the ocean either lose or gain a day in crossing the line, depending upon which direction they are going, and in Mexico you either lose a meal or gain a surplus name for one you did not get.

The morning lunch of bread and coffee is called deseyuno. The breakfast proper, from twelve to three, is almuerzo. From four to eight is the principal meal called comida, dinner, or cena, supper, whichever you choose to call it. I tried faithfully to keep up with them all, but I always felt that I had lost something in keeping tally on four meals and only remembered eating three. I believe there is a trick in it.

Salt meats are never seen except in American restaurants, and they sell at fifty cents a pound. Pork is always dressed by skinning the animal and not by scraping. No person needs to go to market. Everything is brought to your door by peddlers. The table is usually set in the court among the flowers, and it is a very common occurrence for peddlers to go to the head of the table with a basket of fruit and dicker bargains with the hostess during the meal. This method makes the meat supply very precarious except on Monday. After the bull-fights Sunday afternoon, all the slaughtered bulls are sold to the market.

On Monday when the proprietor asks me how I liked my steak, I always feel like giving him some American slang and saying, “It was bully.” The fruits are the very best, and as the season is perpetual, you can secure them fresh every day, such as strawberries, bananas, pine apples, mangos, figs, limes and agua cates or bread fruit. The lime is larger than the orange, but not so sweet and is used in the place of lemons. It is at the market place where you see the fruits in all their profusion, and are tempted to eat your dinner under the unusual surroundings.

Here you eat by faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I hope no one will accuse me of irreverence for using these words, but they just suit me in this particular.

A suitable motto for the general market eating houses ought to be tacked over the entrance, and, with suitable apologies to Mr. Dante’s Inferno, that motto ought to read: “Who enters here leaves Soap behind.” The cooking is done while you wait, and chief among the things you eat by faith is the hot tamale—twice hot, once by pepper and once by steam. The vendor has a large tinned bucket enclosed by a blanket to hold the steam, and the whole contained in a willow basket. If your faith is sufficient, you call for a dozen tamales and the vendor fishes from its steaming, greasy depths, an article wrapped in sections of corn shucks. On dissecting the article you find about equal parts of corn meal, chili and bits of meat. And the meat! Aye, there’s the rub! If we only knew. There are tamales and tamales. All kinds and conditions of meat are said to find a last resting place in the tamale. Carlyle calls the process Sartor Resartus, or the tailor made over; the great American faith article of the same vintage is plain “hash.”

Beef, pork, chicken, frogs and armadillos are all known to the trade, and dark hints or innuendoes to that effect, say that the fat prairie dogs and the Chilhuahua pups make prime tamales. The prairie dog is always fat. The Chilhuahua pup is only a vest-pocket edition of dog that weighs about two pounds, and the other genus or species of Mexican dog that I know has a blue skin and no hair except on the end of his tail. The ordinary tamale is anonymous, and it is well, for, like the boarding house hash, it is better in cog.

The tunas from the prickly pear and the algæ from the canals and irrigating ditches also enter into the bill of fare. With conscious pride in my ability to grapple with the unknown, I made a foolish boast that there was nothing in the Mexican market that my stomach had bolted at, although my taste and my stomach had some pretty lively debates concerning the editorial fitness and filthiness of certain things.

But in an evil hour I boasted. I believe the good book says pride goeth before a fall. I was proud. I had bearded the Mexican lion in his den and had eaten through the lines. I had met the enemy and “they were our’n,” and I boasted of my cast-iron stomach.

My friend said: “Have you eaten any Gusanas de la Maguey? No? Well, come with me.” Now gentle reader, “If you have tears prepare to shed them now.” You have seen a tomato-worm. Well! the word gusana means worm, and this particular gusana is built on the order of a tomato worm, but he lives in better pasture on the maguey plant, and grows a little larger and a little fatter than your middle finger, or say the size of a cannon fire-cracker.

As we approached the market my knees got weak. I had had my pride, and was now going for my f—gusanas.

I felt that a volcanic eruption was about to take place in my immediate neighborhood, and remarked that nature was very kind to these people. My friend neither stopped nor made a shadow of turning, but marched straight to a sorcerer he knew and said, “Señora, my friend is anxious for some gusanas de la maguey at my expense.”

She slowly fished up a dozen stewed, and I fainted! (Curtain.)

CHAPTER V.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE LAJA.

BEYOND San Luis we come to Villa Reyes with the immense Hacienda of Jaral, which at one time controlled 20,000 peon laborers, and during the Revolution of 1810, furnished a full regiment of cavalry to the Viceroy to fight the patriots. Beyond is the town of Dolores Hidalgo, “The Sorrowful Hidalgo,” where was born Hidalgo, the George Washington of Mexican Independence. Sept. 15, 1810, he set the watchfires burning which dimmed not till Spanish misrule was ended in 1820. Still nearby, is the city of San Miguel De Allende, also named for Allende, another patriot priest who, like Hidalgo, suffered martyrdom for Mexican liberty.

Here are the famous baths, with the water gushing from the mountain side, through the baths to the evergreen gardens and fruits and flowers in the valley. This city is situated on the enchanted Cerro de Moctezuma, and overlooks the beautiful valley of the Laja (Lah-hah.) The Hotel Allende was once the palatial home of a wealthy and pious man, Señor Don Manuel Tomas de la Canal and his wife who donated the chapel of the Casa de Loreto. Here is a beautiful Gothic church, the only one in Mexico, and was the work of a native architect who drew his plans with a stick in the sand, and this was the only guide his workmen had. A dozen miles from San Miguel is the town of Atontonilto, famous as the place where Allende and Hidalgo started with the Banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and marched with it to San Miguel and opened the Revolution. Here we leave the plain and enter the Vale of Laja, 250 miles north of the city of Mexico. Before us is a frowning gateway of solid rock, but following the shimmering little river, the beautiful valley breaks upon the view like a panorama. Everywhere is the pepper tree, loaded to the tips with the beautiful berries that look so much like our cherries. Dame Nature here is at her best. Bananas, oranges, lemons and pomegranates everywhere shade the peaceful homes whose acres in the rear are covered with maize and pepper and fruits and flowers.

The people of Mexico do not live in the country, but in cities, towns and hamlets, and prefer to thus live and travel long distances to their work. In the Vale of Laja, it is one continual series of hamlets, where the canon has widened into a beautiful valley whose season is perpetual summer. Whatever grows elsewhere, grows here. Up the rocky slopes where cultivation is impossible, the rich lava soil still supports countless thousands of maguey and cactus plants that produce food and fuel, drink and clothing. The bushels of succulent tunas that a single cactus bears, will feed a family for weeks, and the only labor required is the picking. A stalk of maguey will furnish in its undeveloped bud an excellent substitute for cabbage. The unfermented sap is the agua miel, or honey water of commerce. When fermented, a single stalk will furnish for months a gallon a day of pulque.

Its broad leaves, which are eight feet long, furnish a thatch for the house, and when dried, an excellent fuel. It is here the natives laze their time away from sheer ennui. It is in this valley the railroad contractors never go to hunt laborers. A Mexican works when he is hungry, and why should he be hungry in this valley where his rations may be had for the picking? And what would he do with money? The saloon has no charms where every man is his own distiller, and the law gives no occasion for “moonshine” and “blind tiger.” So it is the poor plains’ people who grade the road and drive the spikes, and even here the railroad people experience difficulties. The native has an inseparable attachment for his humble home, and will not under any circumstance follow a construction gang far. When the construction train has passed his home two or three miles, he finds it too far to return home at night, and the next day he bolts for home, and the company has to hire new laborers in the neighborhood; but when the work gets too far to walk home, they throw up their jobs also. If a few are influenced to remain, the whole family joins the procession, and move their temporary residence each day. The same is true of the army. When on the march it rarely has to supply a commissary, as each soldier’s wife follows the march and cooks for him. In the midst of each hamlet in this valley is to be seen the ever-present bell tower, and, clustered among the orange trees, the little chapel. The native may have no other resting place but mother earth, but his last penny will go to build his church.

While drinking in the beauties of the valley, we suddenly turn into the equally beautiful city of Celaya, in the state of Guanajuata.

In 1570, sixteen married men and seventeen bachelors founded the town, and it increased so in population, that in 1655, by a decree of Philip IV, of Spain, it was made a city, but it was three years afterwards that the inhabitants found it out. For beauty and importance of location, Celaya has no peer. Here is a junction of the two most important railroads, the Central and National, which offer transportation in every direction for the product of its woolen mills and the extensive haciendas throughout the valley.

This is a great market for opals. As a precious stone, the opal ranks high, but on account of its reputed bad luck, there are people who would not wear one as a gift. Those of Hungary and Australia are harder than these, but the fiery, prismatic glint of the opals of Celaya surpasses any in the old country. I have heard of a fourteen carat opal in Hungary that could not be bought for five thousand dollars. In Celaya they are of all grades and all prices, but the most remarkable thing about them is, in Celaya everybody offers them for sale. It does not matter when the train arrives, in the grey of morning or the dead of night, the ragged vendors are always on hand. As the train pulls into the station, a hundred hands will be thrust through the fence pickets, and in each hand, on a piece of black cloth, lie the beautiful gems, sparkling in the artificial light.

“All Americanos are rich,” is a saying of these people, as honestly believed as the catechism, and all prices are made on that basis. If your early education has been neglected in the line of precious stones, you will do well to let these pirates pass, for they are Shylocks all, these black-eyed natives.

One will look you in the eye, cross himself and swear by all the saints that fifty dollars or nothing will move his opal.

If you know your business and the price of opals, you have the money in your hand, and as the train starts, hold the silver temptingly before his eyes, and rare is the case when this will not “fetch” him.

An opal may be precious, but to a hungry man, silver is more precious. And that little trick is good for other trades as well as opals.

Anxiety or interest on your part is as fatal as greenness in trading with these sharpers. Utter contempt and unconcern on your part, throws the burden of concern upon him, and he soon begins to make concessions by asking how much will you give. However much you may want a thing, you must impress him that it is purely a matter of sympathy for his poverty that you buy. You may slyly hear him set the price to one of his countrymen, and when you come up and ask the price, without turning a hair, he will multiply it by two.

The city of Celaya has much of interest in the church line; which is the base of all greatness in this priest-ridden land. These are said to be the prettiest churches in Mexico. The one of Our Lady of Carmen contains the chapel of the Last Judgment and the most beautiful paintings and frescoes. San Francisco, San Augustin, Tercer Orden are all hung with paintings of the Michael Angelo of Mexico, Eduardo Tresguerres, painter, architect and sculptor, a native of Celaya.

The public buildings are worth seeing and the baths are delightful. I have never heard this town spoken of in connection with beautiful women, but the most beautiful madonna face I have seen outside a picture frame, I saw here at the railroad station, and the artist who would paint a picture of beauty should seek this Celayan Helen, and yet from her apparel, she was of humble family, but so was Cinderella.

This city is especially noted for its dulcies, or sweetmeats, and here are made the best in Mexico. To be in good form of course you must eat some Celayan dulcies; and having satisfied your conscience, we pass into the Vale of Solis.

No serpent ever made a more tortuous track than did our train, trying to leave that valley through the canon cut by the fretful little river in ages past. Up the perpendicular cliffs which would shame Niagara, we find a trail blasted from the granite sides just wide enough to admit the track. Under a beetling cliff we pass El Salto de Medina, or Medina’s Leap. So goes the story: Juan Medina was a famous bandit when those gentlemen of the road carried the riches and cares of the country upon their shoulders, and most generously relieved the good people of all trouble in looking after their wealth. Spanish history does not mention that they ever received a vote of thanks for the self imposed duties, but such is the nature of this sordid world. But one day a committee did call upon the bandit on some very pressing business when he was not receiving guests. Perhaps the committee had forgotten his “day at home.” The intrusion so disturbed the bandit that he started away on the pony express, and the committee actually began shooting at him, and, seeing no other escape from his friends, he spurred his horse over the chasm and was dashed to atoms. I did not see the atoms, but I saw the cliff three or four hundred feet high, and if you believe the first part of the story, the atomic theory was easy.

Not a shrub is visible to mar the vision of this huge pile of granite reaching a thousand feet in the air. Creeping along its side we enter the Lopilote Canon, almost as dark as a tunnel. There must be something in a name. Lopilote means buzzard, and I suppose it is called Lopilote canon because the buzzards have no where else to roost but on the edge of the canon, as there is not a bush visible. It reminds me of the man who had a horse that was named Napoleon, all on account of the bony part. On the rear platform is the place to stand. This is a narrow-gauge road, and only has room for the cars with no margin for landscape. Standing on the steps you can easily touch the rock wall on one side with your hand, while on the other you may hear the splash of the imprisoned waters over a sheer fall of many hundreds of feet, but nothing can be seen. The engineer can see only one coach behind his engine as he makes his famous curve of 35 degrees, the shortest on any road in America. Up and straight ahead, where the eye can see only granite walls with peaks bathed in clouds, and no visible means of passage, but at last light breaks through the top, and the devil’s hole is passed.

What a sigh of relief it is to be over with the nervous strain. What if a wheel had slipped or an axle broken, or a stray rock had fallen upon that ten foot trail? There was hardly a chance in a million for a life to have been saved. It recalled the dilemma of a negro who was asked his preference of travel, by rail or steamboat. He unhesitatingly chose the railroad with this argument: “Ef the train runs off the track, dar yo is. Ef the steamboat sinks, whar is you?” He had never traveled the Lopilote Canon when he made the remark, or he would have chosen to walk.

Once out of the Sierra Madre Mountains, we are again in the beautiful Vale of Lerma. The river Lerma is the longest in Mexico, seven hundred miles, and changes its name to Rio Grande de Santiago before it empties into the Pacific. We cross the river at the beautiful city of Acambaro, in the state of Guanajuata, where a branch road leads to Morelos and Patzcuaro, the beautiful lake region. Here is a quaint old arched bridge, built in 1513. Here were headquarters for the Army of Independence, under Hidalgo in 1810, and Gen. Scott’s army crossed this bridge on the march to the city of Mexico. This is called the most self-satisfying city in Mexico, and lies hidden among the trees a half mile from the station. The lover of the quaint and curious should by all means see this old town of ten thousand inhabitants, whose only diversion is to go down and see the train come in. Its quietness is oppressive, and the town seems to be under a spell like the enchanted city in the Arabian Nights.

The fine music by the female orchestra is one of the attractions. In the foreground is the river Lerma, in the background the trees ever green and the mountains ever blue, and peeping up here and there the towers of old churches, which altogether make an enchanted scene worth your journey to see.

It was many centuries ago that the Tarascan and Otomite Indians built this town, and in 1526 Don Nicholas Montanes marched his Spanish troops through the quiet town and laid the foundation of the Catholic church we see in all its glory today. The hand of the vandal has not yet laid hold of Acambaro with its modern innovations and church repairs according to fin du siecle notions of architecture, so the town really looks the age it claims, and the descendants of these same Indians live in the identical houses their ancestors built.

In the Calle de Amargura are fourteen little chapels commemorating the stations of the cross, ending in the Soledad on the hill. The church of San Francisco and the deserted convent have their especial charms. Acambaro is in the state of Guanajuata (wan-a-water), but in the See of Michoacan. While sitting in the beautiful plaza whose immense trees reach to the caves of the old convent towers, you see a carriage approaching drawn by two white mules. As it draws near the crowd, a tall, fine-looking man in long black robe appears and holds his hands above his head. Instanter, every person in sight of that carriage falls to his knees or upon his face, and remains until the hands of the mysterious stranger are lowered. It is the Bishop of Michoacan on the way to his palace in Morelia, and he stopped to bless the people. Slowly and reverently the worshipers rise from their groveling in the dust, with a radiance upon their dusky faces as though the Son of God had just passed by. This is the class of people that keep Mexico living back in the seventeenth century.

Still down the Lerma from Acambaro is the Hacienda de Robles extending thirty-three kilometers on each side of the river, and which furnishes hundreds of peons, and still further is the city of Irapuata, the perpetual home of the strawberry. For three hundred and sixty-five days in the year no train has ever passed Irapuata without strawberries being offered for sale, for in this rich valley it is perpetual seedtime and harvest. The whole year is springtime, and the energies of all the people are devoted to strawberries. It was Sydney Smith who said: “Doubtless God Almighty could have made a better berry than the strawberry, but God Almighty has never done so.” The fresas are all offered in a basket holding from one pint to three quarts, and are arranged with great care, so that the large ones shall all be on top. If you know your business you do not buy till the train is pulling out, and then a silver dime gets fresas, basket and all. When you consider that a Mexican dime is worth five and a half cents in Uncle Sam’s money, you can figure out the cost at leisure. The basket would sell at fifteen cents in the States, and the bottom does not punch up to the middle either. When I look at my pile of empty baskets, I wonder if I cheated the little pirates, but I get my balm in knowing that hundreds of people pay them the thirty or forty cents they first ask for them, which will enable them to strike a balance sheet. I know strawberries are perishable, and a twenty-five cent basket today will not be worth a dime by the next train time, which is next day, so I offer him the price a day in advance, which he would have to take tomorrow. He knows that I am “onto his curves,” as the baseball boys say, so we get along finely and always trade as the train begins to move and he realizes that it is now or never.

From the river and from wells dug in the valley irrigation makes this unusual fertility possible, and the old-time well-sweep is everywhere, with its long see-saw pole with a weight at one end and a bucket tied to the other. A ride of a mile on the horse-car is worth while. You will see what you see in almost every Mexican town, not a shade tree on the streets, and the brown, flat-roofed adobe houses without windows are anything but inviting. Of course there are fine churches, what town has not its Carmen and Merced and San Francisco? And of course its plaza and band-stand, and Sundays and every alternate evening in the week the government furnishes its citizens with music.

Irapuato is an important junction for trains going to the Pacific Coast, and is in the midst of a fertile valley that needs no Nile to enrich it, no augurs to propitiate the God of the harvest, no winter, no summer, this is Utopia.

Leaving Irapuato and Acambaro behind, we still follow the Lerma towards its source. We pass thousands and thousands of peons with their oxen plowing with a sharp stick, or treading out the grain on the harvest floor just as they did in Egypt three thousand years ago. Fat cattle and water-fowl and farms and landscape and shifting panorama give us an uncanny feeling that the thing is not real, that such a beautiful country is seen only in pictures, that some hallucination has taken hold upon us, so swiftly and charmingly do they change in their beauty. Were all of Mexico like the Vale of Lerma, it would be the fairest spot on earth. And then comes the sickening thought that the whole seven hundred miles of this paradise is in the possession of two or three dozen land owners that nothing on earth could prevail upon to sell to the small farmer. These land owners live either in Paris or Madrid, and support palaces in the old world from blood money of these debtridden Mexicans. More than that, they have had laws enacted to restrain their descendants from parting with the land, the rightful inheritance of the Indians who till it on sufferance, and are thus made aliens in the land of their birth.

In the distance is the fountain head of Rio Lerma, and now we see the snow cap of the Volcan de Toluca, and at its base the beautiful city of Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico. Here within three hours of the city of Mexico, are two of the grandest natural wonders on earth, the precipice of Ocoyocac and El Volcan de Toluca. This city of twenty thousand inhabitants was built in 1533, and is upon the dividing line of the tropical country of tierra caliente and the mountainous tierra templada, so absolutely everything you have ever seen growing, will grow here. Its altitude is sufficient for wheat which grows in British America, and the warm winds from the Pacific make an eternal tropical summer for everything else. The buildings in the city are superior to most you have seen. The market-house with its pillars painted in Pompeiian colors is the finest in Mexico, and was once an exposition building. At the station vendors will offer you fruits and basket at such a price you wonder if they were stolen. Here too is a great market for baskets and bird cages, and the baskets are so closely woven they will hold water.

Here is the Instituto Liberario, the Harvard College of Mexico. Here grows the coral tree, whose graceful stem is six or seven feet high with pendant palm-shaped foliage, and crowned with vegetable coral of the deepest red, an exact counterpart of the Mediterranean article. Horse cars lead to the city along Calle Independencia, where stands a statue to Hidalgo et Libertador, and here the wealth of the Republic is displayed in its public buildings. Around the plaza is that universal arrangement of huge arches called portales or arcades, which enclose the sidewalk and support the second story. The average height is twelve or fifteen feet, and besides being a sidewalk, it is also used for vendors’ booths. Here are sold lace work and drawn work and feather work and carved work and onyx and souvenirs of all kinds.

Here is shown the fine residence of a rich haciendado who was once a great patron of the bull-ring and furnished many a toro bravo for the ring, and when the noble animals entered the arena with his colors dangling from their necks, the very walls shook with the loud huzzas. Once upon a time a famous bull fought his way back to life. The lances of the picadores broke and he killed all the horses. The banderilleros could not place the darts so he could not shake them from his shaggy neck, and the matadores lost their reputation and were hissed from the ring, because they could not place the sword. Here the old haciendado begged the president to not permit him to be lassoed and assassinated, but to give him his freedom. This was granted, and many years afterward when he died his skin was stuffed to adorn his master’s banquet hall.

Behind the city is the volcano, which can be explored in two days. The height is 16,156 feet and the top is no more than ten feet wide, and the crater contains a fathomless lake with a whirl-pool in the center. Standing here amid the eternal snows the earth is spread before you as is denied in any other part of the world. Three miles up in the air you stand and in the west you see the Pacific Ocean; across the Sierra Madres appear the snow-white top of Volcan Popocatapetl (smoking mountain) 17,685 feet high; Volcan Ixtaccihuatl (white woman) 15,714 high; Citlatepetl (mount of the star) 17,664 feet high; Nauchampatapetl (square rock) and Pirote’s Chest, peak answering peak, and still through the azure vista beyond lie the blue waters of the Mexican Gulf. Toluca is the fourth highest mountain in Mexico, being overtopped by Orizaba and the two named above. It is from these eternal reservoirs that the cities get their supplies of ice, and any day the Indians laden with their chilly burden descend among the human mozaics to furnish the American barrooms with their sine qua non at ten cents a pound.

Of course the usual churches and fine paintings must be seen, so we visit Tercer Orden, Carmen and Tecajec. And now we prepare to see a sight that has not a peer on the globe. Two engines are hitched to the train and we begin to climb the Sierra Madres. We stop at the little town of Ocoyocac, and in a half hour the train returns on the horse shoe curve one thousand perpendicular feet above the town. Not a bush nor a blade of grass interrupts the vision as we nervously look down one-fifth of a mile upon the toy-looking houses we could drop a stone upon. You instinctively hold your breath as we creep around this narrow trail blasted from the solid granite and marvel at the engineering that could ever dream of such possibilities. Far beyond over the plain of Toluca is a panorama that will abide with you forever, but which you can never describe. We soon come to the mills of JaJalpa and pass under the stone aqueduct more than a hundred feet high which curries the pure mountain water to the thirsty city below.

Every city near a mountain gets its water through these massive stone aqueducts that are built to last a thousand years. Up, up we slowly climb with our two locomotives until we reach Salazar and take a few minutes to raise steam for the final climb. At last we stop on the back-bone of the Sierras, at La Cima, (the summit) twenty-four miles from the capital, and 11,000 feet above the sea. Herein the Torrid Zone among the clouds the frost is white upon the rails, and the damp fog chills you to the marrow. There behind us is a rushing mountain torrent, the source of the river Lerma, just starting on its seven hundred mile journey to the Pacific. Here just in front of the locomotive is a fretful little brook that breaks into a thousand cascades in its journey to the Mexican Gulf. Forty miles to the south is a scene that defies description. A hundred miles to the south stand those mighty sentinels of the beautiful Nahuatl Valley, Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, in that clear atmosphere, almost in speaking distance. In the midst of the valley lie the silver lakes of Texcoco and Xochimilco, large enough to mirror those lofty sentinels and reflect their perpetual robes of white to the nymphs and naiads in the azure depths below.

Could these everlasting hills speak, what a tale they could unfold of the awful tragedies they have witnessed in this valley; of crimes and bloodshed and migrations and banishments; of nations who wrought while Phœnician commerce was young; of cities built and crumbled to dust; of opulence and power and intrigue! They might tell us who carved the Calendar Stone, and who evolved its astronomical knowledge, and who wrote the hieroglyphics of Tula, and in what language are the facade and tablet inscriptions of Palenque and Uxmal, and, before the Aztecs, whence came the Toltecs, and Tlascalans, and their forerunners the Tezcucans, who in turn were driven out by the Acolhuas in the inverse order by Tepanecs, and Chalcos, and Xochimilcos, and who built the seven mysterious cities of Cibola, and the pyramid of Bholula, and the mounds and the pyramids of Tampico, and Panuco and the pyramids to the sun and moon at Teotihuacan, and why was the stately avenue of pillars left at ancient Mitla, and why, O Sphinx of the Valley! dost thou not reveal the secrets of the dead past whose unmultiplied aeons are to thee as but an open book? But the sphinx answered never a word. My tears and eloquence turned to thin air in the morning frost, and after waiting a reasonable time for an answer, I thought of that old tale about Mahomet and the mountain, and that decided my course. I determined to go find out for myself, and as the engineer had dropped one engine behind he said if I was going with him I had better get a move on myself, so I set forth to solve the mysteries that have baffled the world in the Valley of Mexico.

CHAPTER VI.
THE VALE OF ANAHUAC.

THE time is four hundred years ago; the place, the present site of the City of Mexico. In its stead was Tenochtitlan. In this beautiful valley were four kingdoms, three aristocratic republics, a number of minor states and the independent monarchy of Yucatan. Of the four kingdoms in the valley, the Aztec or Mexican was chief, and dictated terms to the other three—Colhuacan, Tlascopan and Michoacan. The three republics were Tlaxcala, Cholula and Huexotzinco, the ancient enemies of the Aztecs, and with whose combined aid Cortez finally conquered them.

On the shores of Lake Texcoco, the Athens of Mexico, stand Cortez and his band of pirates, gazing across the blue waters of the lake towards an island on its bosom, twenty-five miles away. Upon that island is a city, Tenochtitlan, the Rome of Mexico, and the capital of the Aztecs, which the Spaniards called “the most beautiful city on earth.”

Upon the bosom of that lake float thousands of boats, and connecting the city to the mainland are two mighty causeways, guarded by drawbridges and portcullis. According to Spanish authority, within that city were two thousand temples, one hundred palaces and a thousand sumptuous dwellings and hanging gardens, aqueducts and irrigating canals, sculpture and architecture, an elaborate system of religion and philosophy, a priesthood, a written language by means of ideographic paintings, artistic jewelers and a hundred other elements of civilization that have since been swept away by the bigoted Spaniards as the dewdrops before the sirocco.

Within the great plaza there arose a mighty temple, the teocalli, erected to the war-god Huitziloptchli. This temple was a truncated pyramid, whose base was three hundred and eight feet each way, and whose height was one hundred feet, and was reached by a spiral stairway passing four times around. Five thousand priests officiated in this temple, and on its summit was a block of jasper, the sacrificial stone, which is now in the national museum. Upon this stone were sacrificed daily, human victims taken in war, and offered to appease the war-god who had made them successful against their enemies, and twenty thousand victims a year had their hearts cut out by the priests and laid smoking on this altar.

Each morning as the sun rose behind Popocatapetl, the huge drum of serpent skins resounded, the white-robed priests with their wild minstrelsy wound slowly round the pyramid in sight of every inhabitant in the city, and, arriving at the top, turned their faces to the rising sun, stretched their victims across the convex surface of the sacrificial stone, tore the palpitating hearts from the writhing bodies, and, having first offered them to the sun, laid them smoking upon the altar and hurled the bodies down the sides of the pyramid.

Before the altar in the sanctuary stood the colossal image of Huitziloptchli, or Mexitle the “left-handed warrior,” the tutelary deity and war-god of the Aztecs. In his right hand he wielded a bow, and in his left a bunch of golden arrows to denote their victories. Around his waist were the huge folds of a serpent, consisting of pearls and precious stones, and the same ornaments were sprinkled all over his body. Upon the left foot were the feathers of a humming bird whose name the dread deity bore. Around his neck was suspended a chain of alternate gold and silver hearts, to denote the sacrifice in which he most delighted.

The invisible God, the Cause of Causes, was represented by no image and was confined by no temple. The adjoining sanctuary was dedicated to a milder deity who stood next to God. This was Tezcatlipoca, the creator of the world. His image was represented by a young man, richly garnished with gold ornaments and holding a shield, burnished like a mirror, and in it he saw reflected the doings of the world. In a golden platter he received the bleeding hearts of the sacrifice as his offering. Before these altars burn perpetual fires, attended by Vestal Virgins who took their training in the temple, and whose heads were the price of unchastity. At the birth of a female child, its parents dedicated it to the service of some divinity, and Tepantlohuatzin, the superior general of that district, took charge of her education. Two months after birth she was taken to the temple, and a passion flower, a small censer and a little incense were placed in her hand as a symbol of her future occupation. At five years of age she was placed in the seminary to learn the intricacies of the religion, and those who took the vow had to sacrifice their hair.

Boys dedicated to the priesthood were consecrated to Quetzaleoatl, god of the air. At two years of age, the superior made an incision in the breast, which was a sign of consecration. If a priest was guilty of unchastity, he was beaten to death, and his limbs were cut off and presented to his successor as a warning.

Thirty miles from the city was Teotihuacan, the hill of the gods, where stand the pyramid to Tonateuh the sun, and one to Meztle, the moon. Here kings and priests were elected, ordained and buried, and hither flocked pilgrims from every direction to consult the oracles, to worship in the temples of the sun and moon, and to place sacrificial offerings on the altars of their deities.

The priests were separated by several hierarchical degrees. The first of the supreme pontiffs bore the title of Teoteucli “Divine Lord,” and the next was Hueitcopixqui “High Priest,” and was conferred upon those only of illustrious birth. These high priests were oracles, and war was never undertaken without consulting them. Then came the superior-general of the seminary, the steward of the sanctuary, the hymn-laureate of the feast, sacrificers, diviners and chanters.

Four times a day were the priests required to incense the altars, and burn incense to the sun four times a day and five times at night, The perfumes were liquid styrax, (Liquidambar styraciflua), and copal resin (rhus copallina). The custom of human sacrifice, however, was not always a trait of the Aztec. According to the picture-writing of the Aztecs, the race began its existence somewhere in the misty past, but when and where the deponent sayeth not. It was in 648 A.D., that seven of the Nahuatl tribes left their fatherland, and the other six tribes covered the valley with kingdoms, while the Aztecs in the year 1160, came, in their wanderings, to the shores of the lakes, and stopped at different places, cultivating the soil and building reed huts, but having no place to permanently locate their city. In 1216 they reached Tzompango, (place of bones) which city they afterwards gave the name of Mexicatl, their war-god, and changed their own name from Aztecs to Mexicatls.

Xolotl, king of the Chicimecs, seeing he had nothing to fear from them, permitted them to sojourn in his territory. Not long afterwards an Aztec priest carried off a daughter of a Chicimec general, and they were compelled to leave the country. They fled to the land of the Colhuas, where now stands the castle of Chapultepec. A few years afterwards the Colhuas demanded tribute, and, being unable to pay, the Colhuas reduced them to abject slavery. The Colhuas were soon afterwards conquered by the Xochimilcos, and in desperation called upon their Aztec slaves for assistance. Animated with the hope of their own freedom, the Aztecs completely conquered the Xochimilcos, and celebrated their victory with human sacrifice. The Colhuas, alarmed at the prowess and future possibilities of their slaves, gave them their liberty, and bade them depart from the country. Happy to regain their liberty, they once more set out and settled near the lakes, Tezcoco, Xochimilco, Chalco, and Xaltocan, from which they were never to depart.

Tenoch, their chief, saw a cactus growing upon a rock in an island, and on the cactus an eagle perched, and holding in his talons a serpent. Thinking this a propitious sign they immediately founded a city (1325) and called it Tenochtitlan, “stone and cactus,” and to this day the emblem and coat of arms of Mexico is the eagle on a cactus and holding a serpent in his talons. Here they erected a temple to their war god and went out in search of a victim to sacrifice to offer upon the altar. The only animal found was a Colhuan Indian, and, recognizing in him only one of their old oppressors, they tore out his heart and offered it upon the altar. This led to a war of retaliation and expiation which for two hundred years stained the new capital with blood.

Shut in upon the island, and cut off from the mainland by their enemies, the Aztecs, having no land to cultivate, no textures to make clothing, went naked and ate fish and aquatic plants. In their extremity they made rafts and floored them with reeds, and dug up the mud from the lake and spread it upon the reeds and began the cultivation of flowers and the necessities of life upon these chinampas or floating gardens, which are to be seen to this day. Towed by his canoe, the Aztec gardener could move his farm whenever a quarrelsome neighbor made life a burden.

That was six hundred years ago, when the Mexican nation was small, but they soon outgrew the confines of the island, and, driven to desperation, resolved to conquer the mainland. In 1357 there were thirty powerful cities in the valley, united by a sort of feudal bond, each striving to get the mastery, which was finally gained by the Colhuas. The Mexicans now elected a warrior king, Huitzilihuitl “feather of the humming bird,” who was unmarried. Being a politician, he went to Azcapozalco, (now a suburb of the capital) the capital of the Tepanecs, and asked the king of the Tepanecs for his daughter in marriage, and the formation of an offensive and defensive alliance. This the Tepanec king was glad to do, as he knew the fighting quality of the Mexican. No sooner was this accomplished than the Mexican king went to the principal chiefs in the valley and married into all their families, and the Aztec supremacy had its birth.

Released from the islands, the Mexicans secured cotton cloth for their naked bodies, and carried on a rapid commerce. In 1427, the Mexicans won a naval battle over their enemies on lake Chalco, and built the great causeway across the lake as a military road to Tlacotalpan which exists today. Then they resolved to conquer the city of Azcapozalco, the capital of the Tepanecs, and to do so allied themselves with the Acolhuas in 1428, and in a battle which lasted two days the Mexicans completely subjugated the Tepanecs, and made them allies, subject to the order of their masters.

Itzacoatl “The Great” was king and died in 1440, having served his country thirty years as a general and thirteen as king. His nephew Montezuma I. succeeded him. In 1449 the city was swept by a flood, and he built an immense dike nine miles long to protect the city from the lake. This dike at the present day is called Albarredo Vieja. He also had his portrait sculptured on the rocks at Chapultepec. Montezuma I. was the ablest of the Aztec kings and built and fortified the outposts of the city and died in 1469 after a reign of twenty years.

It had become a custom for each king to prove his right to be king by conquering his enemies and bringing the prisoners home to be sacrificed at his coronation. This was to make and keep the young men as warriors. Axayacatl was the sixth king and he immediately set out against the kingdom of Tehuantepec to capture prisoners for his coronation sacrifice. He added their territory to his own and returned home laden with spoil, and had his portrait sculptured on the rock of Chapultepec by the side of Montezuma I. He died in 1481 and his son Tizoc succeeded. In his short reign of five years, he conquered fourteen cities and built more temples in the capital. Ahuitzotl was his successor, and immediately began work on the great temple begun in previous years. He began war to get victims for his coronation, which he postponed till the temple should be completed, which was four years. When the dedication day arrived, festivities lasted four days, and fifteen thousand prisoners were sacrificed upon the altar of the war-god. This king extended the Mexican empire to its present limits and died in 1502. He was liberal, and when he received tribute from his vassal states, he called the people together and distributed it among them. To his soldiers he gave bars of gold and silver, and precious stones.

His successor was Montezuma II. whom Cortez so foully murdered in later years. Montezuma was an oriental despot, and he made his capital the fairest city in the new world. His predecessors had guaranteed the integrity of their island city by every means in their power. The temple occupied the great place now covered by the Cathedral and Plaza Mayor. It was surrounded by a wall of stone and lime, ornamented by figures of serpents raised in relief which had the name of cotepantla, wall of serpents. This quadrangled wall was pierced with huge battlemented gateways, opening upon the four principal streets of the city. Over these gates were arsenals, and within the walls were barracks of thousands of soldiers.

Throughout the city were canals by the side of the streets in this new world Venice, so that canoes from their trading excursions could traverse any part of the city. Great military causeways led to the mainland across the lakes, and were guarded by drawbridges, to shut the enemy out or shut themselves in. The city could not be entered by any other way than these causeways. The southern one was called Iztapalapan and was seven miles long. The northern one was Tepejecac, three miles long, which now leads to Guadalupe. The other two were Tlacopam and Chapultepec and were each two miles long, They were broad enough to allow ten men abreast on horseback, and are all in use today. The city was nine miles in circumference and was guarded at every point.

No sooner was Montezuma elected, than he waged war upon the Otomites to get victims for his inaugural, and returned with five thousand prisoners which were promptly slaughtered to the war-god, and then he became a very tyrant. He immediately dismissed all ordinary servants, and compelled six hundred princes of the royal blood in his conquered provinces to be his servants, and they had to approach him barefooted and in common apparel. On the streets his subjects must close their eyes when he passed and not look upon his dazzling greatness. He drank from gold vessels and no vessel was ever used the second time. Swift runners by relays, brought him fresh fish and fruits each day from the gulf, a distance of two hundred miles. A thousand women were in his harem, and when a favorite prince deserved a favor, he made him a present of one of his houris.

Menageries and aviaries, representing all the birds and animals of his kingdom from New Mexico to Guatemala, were provided for, and fed daily with the food each was accustomed to. In the midst of his extravagances, Cortez appeared on the other side of the lake with a hundred and fifty thousand Indian allies of the valley, who were only too anxious to see their ancient enemy humbled.

Montezuma was the only Aztec king who was no soldier. He allowed the crafty Spaniards to fill his capital, and to buy their departure, filled their room to the ceiling with gold and silver, which only whetted the appetites of the treasure-seekers and they asked for more. Montezuma was treacherously imprisoned and was afterwards murdered by Cortez, then the Mexicans rose in their might on that terrible July night in 1520 and drove them from the city, and Guatemotzin was made king. He was a soldier from the old stock, and had he been king at first, the Spaniards would never have set foot in Tenochtitlan. He immediately put the city in defense for the return of the Spaniards. Meanwhile Cortez built a fleet of boats for the lake and got men and cannon from Cuba, and spent a year in organizing the disaffected Indians in the valley against their ancient enemy.

The next year, in May 1521, he appeared again with Indians from every nation in the valley, according to the exaggerated Spanish authority, five hundred and twenty thousand men, and laid siege to the city by land and by water, for three months, and then occurred a scene that has never been exceeded in history for bravery.

The Mexicans were born warriors to a man. The besieging army was armed with cannon and muskets and sword and horse, and was clad in steel coats of mail, yet for three months there were daily hand-to-hand combats, where Mexicans fought with short obsidian knives against the blades of Toledo. The great city, nine miles in circumference, was filled with people to the brim, their food supply cut off, the aqueduct which brought them fresh water from Chapultepec across the lake, destroyed; forced to drink the brackish salt water from the lake, and to eat the bark and roots from trees, yet they asked no quarter. Mothers would sit and see their starved children die at their breasts, and then ravenously devour their dead bodies. Men wounded unto death, would still hurl defiance at the invaders when too weak to hurl their weapons.

Cortez had succeeded so well in his blockade that all the timorous nations in the valley, like wolves around a wounded bison, severed their allegiance to the Aztec king and flocked to the Spaniards, till he had, by his own figures, nearly half a million men around the doomed city. He sent embassadors to Guatemotzin to surrender, as resistance was hopeless. Guatemotzin ordered the messengers to be sacrificed. Then Cortez ordered his men to tear the city down as they went, as every house contained Mexican warriors. For days they fought and destroyed. The Mexicans resisted every inch of the ground, and when a Spaniard was captured, would take him to the temple and sacrifice him in full view of the Spanish army. The city was reeking with the unburied dead, and the Mexicans were eating the flesh of their comrades, but they asked no quarter. Cortez hated to destroy so beautiful a city, and after twelve days of fighting and seven-eighths of the houses had been destroyed and the canals filled with the rubbish, he sent another commission to treat with Guatemotzin. “Tell Malinche the Aztecs are men and not children,” was his answer. Thus angered, Cortez turned his savage Indian allies upon the starving emaciated Mexicans, and butchered forty thousand more that night before they stopped to rest, and then waited till morning and sent another embassy to the proud king. “Tell Malinche I am prepared to die where I am,” was all his answer; and the stench and steam from the putrifying bodies was terrible, but no man, woman or child begged for mercy, so Cortez ordered the destruction of the rest of the city. All day long they tore down walls upon weak and dead and dying Mexicans, but met defiance from everyone like a wounded tiger, tracked to his lair by the trailing huntsman. To the Indian allies they would say: “Aye, destroy, but the more you tear down the more you will have to build up. If we conquer, we will make you rebuild; if the white man conquer, he will make you rebuild;” and still the destruction went on.

The Mexicans had stripped the bark from all the trees and had dug up the roots and eaten them, and were still eating their dead companions and drinking salt water, but not one asked for quarter or begged for mercy. All the houses had been destroyed but a small cluster which were still filled by dying Mexicans. The Spaniards and Indians were wading in mire caused by the pools of blood, and closed upon the last remaining Mexicans. Thirteen days of slaughter and starvation had reduced them to skeletons, but they hurled stones with their weak arms at their enemies. As their enemies closed upon them, many plunged into the canal to commit suicide. Twenty Spaniards closed around Guatemotzin and the brave king with buckler and sword stood to receive them all. His subjects begged the conquerors to spare his life. His only remark was that he hoped they would spare his wife and child. When he was taken before Cortez, he proudly walked up to him and said: “Malinche, I have done all a brave man can do, now do what you will.” Then touching a knife in the belt of Cortez, he said: “You had better use that on me.” Cortez afterwards tortured him to make him disclose his wealth and then murdered him.

Of all that mighty host, not one had proved a traitor or begged for mercy, or acted a coward. They had lived by the sword and died by it without a murmur. Probably thirty thousand were left alive on that last day, too weak to fight, and not quite dead from hunger, and that was all that was left of the great Mexican Empire. Of the beautiful dream city, not one stone was left above another and today, only the four causeways are left in the city of Mexico that was a part of Tenochtitlan.

“Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand
Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy lethe.”

The siege of the city of Tenochtitlan lasted seventy five days.

CHURCH OF SAN AUGUSTIN.

CHAPTER VII.
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.

WHERE stood the ancient pyramid and temple to the war-god in Tenochtitlan, today stands the great Cathedral facing the Plaza Mayor in the City of Mexico. Where stood Montezuma’s palace is now the National Palace; where was Montezuma’s treasure-house are now the Post-office and National Museum, with Montezuma’s shield, the sacrificial stone from the ancient temple, and a thousand gods and idols inscribed in the ancient Aztec and Toltec languages. Chapultepec, which was used as Montezuma’s summer-house, is still used as the “White House” of Mexico. Montezuma’s favorite cypress tree, which measures fifty feet in circumference, is as green today as any tree in the beautiful park of Chapultepec, and nowhere outside the pages of the Arabian Nights is there such an enchanting, living story as can be seen every day in the City of Mexico.

Unless you touched with your own hand, and saw with your own eyes, the very elements of this strange, fascinating history, you might doubt your reason and pronounce the whole story a figment of the imagination; but here is history personified.

Let us begin with the great Cathedral, the center-piece of Mexico and its past. Here on this spot stood the ancient temple on the top of the lofty pyramid, down whose bloody sides flowed the blood of a hundred and thirty thousand human sacrifices, and not two hundred yards from here, in the museum, you can put your hand upon the sacrificial stone that bore witness to every one. Here in front of this idol, an altar received the reeking hearts, torn with obsidian knives from the breasts of that dead army, and there at your back stand both the hideous god that exacted this sacrifice, and the blood-stained porphyritic altar itself.

Here is no room for doubt. The museum, or those in other lands, contain all that history has told us of, and they were dug from the ruins when the foundation of the cathedral was laid. The first church on the site of the pyramid was completed in 1523, but the present cathedral was not completed till 1573. The roof was put on in 1623, three years after the first mass was said, and it was forty-five years afterwards before it was dedicated. The towers were completed at a cost of $200,000 in 1791, two hundred and eighteen years after the foundations were laid. With the cheap and gratuitous labor with which it was built, its actual cost will never be known, but was in the millions. The length is 387 feet; width, 177 feet, and height 179 feet. The towers are 203½ feet, and built of cut stone, and the roof of brick tiles. Humboldt said that the view from the towers is the finest in the world. The group of forty or fifty bells in the towers are the finest in this country, but they are not set in chimes. The largest is the Santa Maria de Guadalupe, nineteen feet high and cost $10,000. It is next to the big Russian bell in the Kremlin. The second in size is the Dona Maria in the eastern tower. When these bells strike the hour of noon, every head in the street is bared. The interior of the cathedral is in the shape of a Latin cross. Ninety quadruple pillars, each thirty-five feet in circumference support the roof.

The vaulted roof with its rich decorations, massive altars of intricate carvings, the choir and organ, are grand beyond description. There are seven chapels on each side, separated by carved railings and gratings. The choir and main altar are enclosed by a massive railing of gold, silver and copper, valued at one million dollars. There are five naves and six altars; the altar of Los Reyes (the Kings) is the finest. Beneath it are the heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Jiminez and Aldama, brought here with great pomp and ceremony after the war of Independence had been fought and won. In the chapel of San Felipe de Jesus are the remains of Augustin Yturbide, El Libertador, the first Emperor of Mexico. The Chapel of San Pedro contains the remains of the first Archbishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumarraga, and one of the characters of early Mexican history, Gregorio Lopez, the reputed son of Philip II. of Spain.

A number of fine paintings hang upon the wall, a genuine Murillo and a Michael Angelo. Those in the dome represent the Assumption of the Virgin. Over the stalls is the Immaculate Conception, by Juan Carreo. Near the choir and Altar of Pardon are two paintings by La Sumaya, the only examples by a woman. In La Capilla de las Reliquias are twelve pictures of the Holy Martyrs by Herrera. The Sacristy walls are covered by the great pictures of The Entry into Jerusalem, The Glory of St. Michael, The Immaculate Conception, The Assumption, The Triumph of the Sacrament and The Catholic Church, by Christobal de Villolpando and Juan Carreo. In another room may be found The Last Supper and The Triumph of Faith, by José Alcibar, and the portraits of all the Archbishops. In the Chapter Room are three of the best, John of Austria imploring the Virgin at Lepanto, and a Virgin, by Cortona, and the Virgin of Bethlehem, by Murillo. There are other paintings whose number is legion, and would require a book to describe them all.

The High Altar was once the richest in the world, but has been many times plundered in the many revolutions, yet still holds much of its former magnificence. The solid gold candlestick, heavier than one man could lift, the statue of the Assumption made of solid gold and inlaid with rubies, diamonds and precious stones worth a million dollars, and many other costly things have been plundered, and still it is doubtless decorated more costly than any other church in America. It was from the tower of the pyramid in the same place that Montezuma pointed out to Cortez the beauties of the city and valley.

The group of churches about the Cathedral, but not a part of it, is interesting. La Capilla de las Animas (the Chapel of Souls) where masses are said for the souls in Purgatory, is in the rear. El Sagrario Metropolitano is in the east and was the first parish church in Mexico. Its foundations were laid in 1521, and it is now one of the most beautiful churches in Mexico. Its rich facades and decorations are superb. La Capilla de La Soledad is between this and the cathedral and near by is the parish church of San Pablo.

Four squares north is Santa Domingo, the house of the Spanish Inquisition, now used as a medical college. Near the south end of the same plaza is a fountain marking the spot where the eagle came down in 1325, and picked up the snake and lighted on the cactus as is now seen in Mexico’s coat of arms. One square west of the Alameda is the church of San Hipolito of the Martyrs, built on the spot where so many Spaniards were slaughtered in the retreat on the night of noche triste, (dismal night) July 1, 1520.

In a corner of a wall at the juncture of a little side street is a curious tablet, showing in relief an eagle carrying an Indian in its talons. The inscription in the medallion above asserts: “So great was the slaughter of the Spaniards at this point by the Aztecs, July 1, 1520, called for this reason Noche Triste, that having in the following year triumphantly re-entered the city, the victors resolved to build a chapel here, dedicated to San Hipolito, because the capture of the city occurred on that Saint’s day.”

The City of Mexico has 375,000 inhabitants and hundreds of churches worth a king’s ransom, and they are still being enriched, and by whom? The paupers! The more ignorant a person is, the more gullible, and these well-groomed priests, by keeping the people ignorant, play upon their credulity. In the Chapel of Lost Souls, where prayers are said for souls in Purgatory, a priest named Concha carried on this farce until he was eighty-seven years old. The cheapest mass even for the paupers is one dollar, and the rich are squeezed for all they are worth. Father Concha during his lifetime celebrated forty-five thousand masses at so much a say, which must have netted him a million dollars! No priest can celebrate more than one mass a day and two on Sunday, which makes about four hundred and fifty in a year. Suppose he accepts two hundred dollars from two hundred poor people at a dollar a mass, and accepts five hundred dollars from the wealthy; he accepts more money than he can legally earn in a year. Does he return that money? Not much. And how is the poor deluded creature to ever know that the prayer he paid for will ever be said, to help the late departed friend in Purgatory? He has absolute faith in the process, and it never occurs to him to figure out the possibility of his particular prayer being laid upon the shelf on account of press of business.

Most priests make engagements or “intentions” for more masses than they can perform, and if he is honest, he will sell his surplus to a less favored brother priest with few “briefs” at a handsome profit. Technically they are supposed to do that, but who ever knew a priest to do so?

O no, he knows a good thing when he sees it and the “dear people” will never know the whole thing is a humbug. To be sure, when the priest finds a tough case he will charge a good round sum to pray him out of Purgatory, and he usually collects from Mr. T. C. while he is alive and in good health, clothed and in his right mind.

Reprobate sinners who had a tough time on earth and no hopes for better in the future, generally fix the future all right with the padre before they start to the house-warming. Now these good fathers do not believe a word of the doctrine they preach, because they are all well educated, but they teach it to the people and threaten with excommunication if they do not find the shekels, so the poor beggars will go naked to find their assessment.

And not only in Mexico. I know a poor woman in Michigan who had to sell her only cow to raise a forty dollar assessment on a new church, and she did it under fear of a threat. I have had a poor cancer-eaten pilowa hold out her skinny hand to me and beg in the name of God for “un centavo, Señor,” for her starving children, and I have followed her back to the vestry to see her buy candles to burn before the altar of her chosen saint for value received from that defunct in times past. What does the priest care for the price of blood-money? Follow me to Jinks and see.

Jinks is a licensed gambling house, that I was told on good authority paid the city twenty thousand dollars a year to run the faro bank, three card monte and the roulette wheel. In search after knowledge, I went to Jinks. It is as public as a theater and good order is preserved by policemen who sit to the closing hour and see the lights out. There at a late hour I saw barrels and barrels of silver dollars change hands. Neither bank drafts, paper money nor gold are accepted—only silver.

Great brawny armed porters are there whose only duty is to carry boxes of silver from the vaults to the table, and from the table to the vaults, and at every table sit the clean faced priests who gamble with stacks of silver till the wee sma’ hours, and tomorrow they will go among their parishioners and beg more money for Mother Church. They teach the people that absolute obedience to church behests can only be had in obedience without will and will without reason.

Says Charles Lampriére: “The Mexican church, as a church, fills no mission of virtue, no mission of morality, no mission of mercy, no mission of charity. Virtue cannot exist in its pestiferous atmosphere. The cause of morality does not come within its practice. It knows no mercy and no emotion of charity ever nerves the stony heart of the priesthood, which, with an avarice that knows no limit, filches the last penny from the diseased and dying beggar, plunders the widows and orphans of their substance as well as their virtue, and casts such a horoscope of horrors around the death-bed of the dying millionaire, that the poor, superstitious wretch is glad to purchase a chance for the safety of his soul in making the church the heir of his treasure.”

The reader may get the impression that I am rather hard on the Catholic Church. Of the church in the United States I know but little, but when the reader has seen as much of the church as I saw in Mexico, he will at least be charitable to the writer. There in the Catholic Church the worship of Christ is hidden behind the theatricals of gaudily dressed priests, incensed sanctuaries, ornamented images of the Virgin Mary, beautiful pictures, frescoed paintings, scapulars, medals, relics, and Agnus Deis, with their accompanying indulgences; and associated with most entrancing music, fragrant flowers, lighted candles, gorgeously dressed altars, surpliced acolytes, blessed ashes, holy water, consecrated wafers, holy oil and chrism.

There are also the attractive ceremony of extreme unction, confession, satisfaction, besides the lenten feasts, the days of abstinence, genuflections and stations of the cross, the crozier, and mitres, with the pontifical high mass, decorations, Latin liturgies, illuminated missals, gold and silver ciboriums, ostensoriums and chalices, candelabras and vases, crosses and precious stones, costly laces and fine linens, and the royal purple and the countless ceremonies which the blind follower is not meant to understand.

The bible and Christ are left out of the above enumeration, and never have I seen the bible in the hands of a Mexican layman. They are discouraged from owning a bible and are told that the priest will read and interpret it for them. What can a Mexican Indian get for his peace of soul and conscience out of the above enumeration, when probably five hundred words constitute his entire vocabulary and Latin is no part of it? All these insignia must he go through before he gets to Christ, and then he is told he is not worthy to go to Him, but must pray the Holy Virgin and the Saints to intercede for him, else he will be eternally damned in the fires of Purgatory. Some particular Saint is chosen and assigned him, and he is assured that if he buy candles enough and burn them on the altar before that particular saint, the said saint will prosper his undertaking, and if it succeed, he must ever afterward give the credit to the saint.

We were looking at the statue of the patriot, Hidalgo. My young Mexican friend said: “Hidalgo is our patron saint, he freed us from Spain; who is yours?” I said that I was a protestant and had no patron saint. “But,” he said, “you must have one. We were subjects of Spain, and Hidalgo started the revolution that made us free. Therefore he was canonized and became our patron, and now we pray to him when we want favors. Your people were once slaves and got your freedom from the Americans, and you must have had a leader, else how could ten million slaves vanquish sixty million Americans?” “But,” I said: “you don’t read American history. We did not get our freedom by a revolution, but by a civil war with Americans fighting on both sides.” “But you were bound to have a leader, who was he?” “Oh!” I said, “it was Frederick Douglass.” A beam of satisfaction crossed his countenance as he handed me his hand: “We have both been in the toils and our good saints have made us free. Viva Douglass y Viva Hidalgo!”

And so these poor deluded people are taught that every good and perfect thing cometh from above, but—through the hands of a saint or the Mother of God, and the only honor that redounds to Christ and his Father is the fact that they are members of the same family as the Holy Virgin. And so by a system of black-mail, more tyrannical than was the brigandage of twenty years ago, priest-ridden Mexico has built three magnificent piles of rock and marble and alabaster and chalcedony with the blood of widows and orphans.

The world was shocked a few years ago because Mtesa did the same thing in Africa. The only difference I see is that Mtesa killed his victims outright and mixed mortar with the blood of young girls, but here the process is a lingering torture of body and mind, and a life of abject poverty and misery for the living that overwhelms the stranger with its omnipresence. The Catholic faith has changed these people’s ceremonies, but not their dogmas. The bowing to the statues and altars and images of the apostles, and the veneration of the shrines and the absolute faith in the incantations of the priests to the power they do not understand, is exactly what the Aztecs did in the temple of the war-god six hundred years ago.

His public ceremony is changed and he no longer offers human sacrifice upon the altars, but there are Indians in Mexico today who will secretly celebrate their ancient festivals, and slyly hang wreaths of flowers upon the huge idols on exhibition in the City of Mexico.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHRINE OF GUADALUPE.

THREE miles north of the City is the Hill of Tepeyacac. Leading from the city is the ancient causeway built across the lake to Tepeyacac before the Conquest. A street car now traverses this causeway to the town of Guadalupe and the famous Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the holiest fane in Mexico. The chain of mountains which bound the Valley of Mexico on the north here project into the valley and terminate in the Hill of Tepeyacac, in the Aztec language, “the termination.” Before the Conquest, the Indians worshiped on this hill an idol called Tonantzin, “The Mother of the Gods.” This deity seemed to have corresponded to the Cybele of classical antiquity.

Father Florencia, who is the safest authority to follow on the apparition up to the year 1688, when he published his book, “The Northern Star of Mexico,” piously observes:—“The Virgin desired that her miraculous appearance should take place on this hill to dispossess the mother of false gods of the vain adoration rendered to the idol by the Indians, and to show the latter that she alone was the Mother of the true God, and the true mother of men, and that where crime and idolatry and human sacrifice had abounded, grace should still more abound.

THE LEGEND.

Tradition says that an Indian neophyte, Juan Diego, was on his way on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 9, 1531, to hear the Christian doctrine expounded by the Franciscans of Santiago Tlalteloco. His home was at Tolpetlac, and to reach the city he had to pass the Hill of Tepeyacac. On reaching the eastern side of the hill, he heard strains of music which seemed to him like the notes of a chorus of birds. He stood still to listen, and then beheld on the hillside the vision of a beautiful lady, surrounded by clouds, tinged with the colors of the rainbow.

The lady called Juan, and as her appearance was both commanding and gracious he at once obeyed, and she addressed him as follows: “Know, my son, that I am the Virgin Mary, mother of the true God. My will is that a temple should be built for me here on this spot, where you and all your race will be always able to find me and seek my aid in all your troubles. Go to the Bishop and in my name tell him what you have seen and heard. Tell him, too, that this is my wish, that a church be built for me here, and for so doing I will repay you with many graces.”

Juan sought the Bishop, who was Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan, the first and last Bishop of Mexico; for during the closing years of his life, the see was raised to the rank of archbishop. Juan Diego had some difficulty in gaining admission to the prelate’s presence, and when he succeeded in delivering his message, small attention was paid to it, as the Bishop was inclined to treat the story as an hallucination. Juan Diego returned that afternoon to his village, and passed the same spot where he had seen the vision in the morning.

The lady was again there, and asked him how he had sped. He related the slight attention the Bishop had paid him, and asked the lady to be pleased to choose another messenger. But she replied that he was not to be dejected, but to return to the episcopal residence and deliver the message the following day. The next day was Sunday and Juan rose early, came in and heard mass at the parish church of Santiago Tlalteloco, and then repaired to the house of the Bishop and repeated his errand with great earnestness. This time the prelate paid more attention to the Indian’s narrative, and told him if the lady appeared again, he was to ask her for a sign. At this Juan was dismissed and the Bishop sent two servants after him covertly, to observe what he did and whither he went. The servants did as they were bidden, following Juan along the same road that leads today from the City of Mexico to Tepeyacac, but when Juan reached the Hill, he became invisible to their eyes, and though they walked round and round the Hill they could not find him. Therefore they returned to the Bishop and told him that in their opinion Juan was an impostor and an embassador of the devil and not of the Virgin.

But while Juan was invisible to them he was once more in converse with the lady, and told her the Bishop had commanded him to ask for a sign, so she told him to return on the following morning and she would give him a sign which would win him full credit for his mission.

On reaching home Juan found his uncle, Juan Bernadino, dangerously sick. Instead of returning to the lady next day, he spent the time hunting medicine-men among his tribe, and in gathering simple remedies for a cure. But all day his uncle got steadily worse, and so the following morning, Dec. 12, 1531, he started for the Franciscan convent of Santiago Tlalteloco to fetch a confessor for his uncle. The road led by the Hill of Tepeyacac, and fearful of meeting the vision again, he determined to pass by another route. But this did not avail him, for near the place where the spring now bubbles up, he saw the vision for the fourth time. The lady did not seem at all offended at Juan for not coming on the day she had commanded, but told him not to be anxious about his uncle, as at that moment he was sound and well again. She then spoke of the sign or token for the Bishop, and told Juan to climb to the top of the hill (where the small chapel now stands) and that there he should find a quantity of roses growing; that he should gather them all, fill his tilma with them, and carry them to the Bishop.

Juan knew well that December was not the time of year for roses, and besides that bare rock never produced flowers at any time of year, but he immediately did as the lady told him, and found the spot aglow with the most beautiful roses blossoming. He gathered them one by one and immediately repaired to the Bishop’s residence. Juan told him what had happened, and opened out his tilma. The flowers fell to the ground, when it was seen that a representation of the vision had been miraculously painted on the coarse fabric of the tilma. The Bishop fell on his knees and spent some time in prayer. He then untied the tilma from the Indian’s neck, and placed it temporarily over the altar of his private oratory.

Such is the tradition, believed by the majority, though not by all Mexican Catholics. I shall not treat of the legend theologically, but as a traveler interested in all traditions and monuments so abundant in this historic land.

The apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe belongs not to that class of beliefs in the Catholic Communion which are articles of faith binding on the conscience of all Catholics, but to those pious popular traditions which have received a more or less direct sanction from the ecclesiastical authorities, and which it is considered improper in members of the Catholic Church to doubt or call in question, at least publicly. This may satisfy the curiosity of a number of people who profess no particular belief, but are anxious for impartial information.

Bishop Zumarraga at once set to work to build a hermitage or small chapel at the foot of the hill of Tepeyacac for the reception of the miraculous painting, and, as Father Florencia observes, “Bis dat qui cito dat,” the work was pushed so rapidly that the building was ready Dec. 26, 1531, fourteen days after the vision appeared on the tilma. The painting was transported to the chapel with great pomp, and the occasion forms the subject of one of the wall paintings in the present basilica, executed by Father Gonzalo Carrasco, and to which allusion will be made in the description of the edifice. For ninety years the piety of the Mexicans was displayed towards the image in this small chapel. But such was the quantity of alms deposited by the worshipers, that enough money was soon available to erect a sumptuous shrine for the reception of the venerated image. This church was dedicated by Juan de La Cerna, Archbishop of Mexico, November 1622. In this church the image was venerated 350 years, and is substantially the same as the present basilica in spite of external repairs and internal alterations.

In 1629 occurred the great inundation in Mexico City, and it was determined by the Archbishop Francisco Manso y Zuniga and the Marquis de Ceralvo, to bring the image of the Virgin to the city to procure a subsidence of the waters.

Quite a fleet of barges and gondolas, with the civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries on board, started fer the sanctuary of Guadalupe, as it was not possible to reach it on foot on account of the inundation. The image on the tilma was taken on board the barge of the archbishop, which, as evening approached was lighted, as were the gondolas, with Chinese lanterns. Musicians played sacred music as the fleet moved over the placid waters. On arriving in the city, the image was placed in the archiepiscopal mansion, whence, on the following day, it was carried to the Cathedral, where it remained four years, the inundation lasting that long. However, the Mexicans assert that it was the intercession of the Virgin that caused the subsidence of the water after all.

In 1666, the Dean of the Cathedral of Mexico, D. Francisco Siles, determined to collect the floating traditional evidence of the apparition in a clear and methodical form. Quite a number of witnesses were examined by the tribunal, composed of the following ecclesiastics:—Juan de Poblete, Juan de la Camara, Juan Deiz de la Barrera and Nicolas del Puerto.

Canons Siles and Antonio de Gama went to the village of Cuantitlan, where Juan Diego was supposed to have been born, to look up witnesses. Some of the witnesses examined were over a hundred years old. All of the witnesses testified to having, in childhood, heard the tradition from their parents. It was then attempted on the strength of the evidence thus collected, to obtain the approval of Rome for the apparition, but the attempt was then unsuccessful.

Cardinal Julio Rospillozi, who in 1667 was elected Pope under title of Clement IX., wrote in 1666 to Dr. Antonio de Peralta y Castaneda, of the Cathedral of Puebla, saying it would be impossible to obtain the countenance of Rome. He said that as the image seemed to be identical with the Immaculate Conception, it seemed superfluous to grant a special office for the festival of Guadalupe. Afterwards, being elected Pope, he granted some favors to this devotion.

In 1740, Boturini obtained the papal authority for crowning the image, but his failure and subsequent disgrace are well known. In 1751, the Jesuit priest, Juan Francisco Lopez, was sent to Rome on a special mission, both to confirm the choice of Mexico of the Virgin of Guadalupe as its special patron, and to obtain a special mass and office for the feast of the 12th of December. He took with him two copies of the image, said to have been made by the celebrated artist Miguel Cabrera. Lopez performed his mission with great energy and success. He obtained an audience with the reigning Pope, Benedict XIV., showed him the copies and gained all his requests. When, in 1756, he returned to Mexico bearing the papal briefs, he was received with immense honors and rejoicings.

To come to a later date, in 1886, the archbishops of Mexico, Michoacan and Guadalajara applied to the Pope for permission to crown the image. This privilege can be granted only by the Pope, and the crowning is theoretically done by him. Leo XIII. made favorable answer in February 1887, and in August 1894 granted some additions to the office and lessons for the day. The ceremony of the coronation took place at last, Oct. 12, 1895, in the presence of thirty-seven Mexican, American, Canadian and other prelates, and a large concourse of the clergy and the most prominent citizens of Mexico. When the crown was raised to its position above the image, the congregation broke into loud acclamations. The crown itself is a miracle of the jeweler’s art, and with its galaxy of gems—diamonds, rubies and sapphires—is worth a king’s ransom.

Early in 1887 Father Antonio Plancarte y Labastida, a nephew of the then archbishop of Mexico, prepared to carry out a long cherished design for the renovation and embellishment cf the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. For this purpose, the image, after much opposition on the part of the Indians, was conveyed to the neighboring Church of Capuchinas, and the extensive plans were then initiated. The architect first employed was Emilio Donde, but he was soon superseded by Juan Agea. At an early hour on the morning of Sept. 30, 1895, the image was carried back to the basilica, and the restored building was consecrated Oct. 1.

The first impression on entering is an ensemble of gorgeous and harmonious coloring, and it is some time before the eye can rest on individual objects. Naturally the raised Presbyterium and High Altar claim attention. The Presbyterium is reached by four separate flights of twelve steps. It is paved with diamond slabs of white and black Carrara marble. The altar and reredos, the latter affecting the form of a frame for the painting of the Virgin, are severe and classical in design. The only material used is the finest Carrara marble known as “Bianco P.,” and exquisitely wrought gilded bronze. All the marble of the altar is monolithic, and was executed at Carrara by the sculptor Nicoli, the Mexican architects Juan Agea and Salome Pina. All the bronze work is from Brussels. On either side of the altar is a figure kneeling in adoration; that on the left, or Gospel side, is Bishop Zumarraga, that on the Epistle side is Juan Diego, who is represented as making an offering of roses. Both are of Carrara marble. At the top of the reredos are three angels, representing the archdioceses of Mexico, Michoacan and Guadalajara, which applied to Pope Leo XVI. for permission to crown the image. The central one holds out a crown of singularly pure and chaste design. Below them and immediately above the frame is a cherub in relief, holding the jeweled crown. The High Altar is double, there being slabs for the celebration of mass, both before and behind. Over the High Altar is a handsome Byzantine baldachin sustained by pillars of Scotch granite from Aberdeen, and the baldachin is surmounted by a gilded cross formed of roses. The rose occurs in all the decorations, as it is the symbol of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

On the top of the front arch of the baldachin are the arms of Pope Leo XIII. and the apices of the other three arches are filled with the arms of the Archbishops of Mexico, Michoacan and Guadalajara. On the vault of the baldachin, in Gothic letters are the Latin distiches, composed for the image by Pope Leo XIII. and which are as follows:—

Mexicus heic populus mira sub Imagine gaudet
Te colere, alma Parens, praesidioque frui
Per te sic vigeat felix, teque auspice, Christe
Immotam servet firmior usque fidem.
Leo P. P. XIII.