I
It was another long day’s journey to the southern border, through a warm sunny country of jungle and blue lagoon.
An air of peace and tranquillity pervaded the land. The engineer, as though infected with the lethargy of the tropics, loafed along from one tiny village to another, stopping at every high-peaked hut of thatch that arose from the low forests of wild cane.
Indians came aboard in merry, chattering groups. They were clad in brilliant rags, invariably tattered to shreds, yet blazing with scarlets and greens, and rivaling the plumage of the parrots and cockatoos that screamed at us from the bamboo thickets. They wore narrow-brimmed straw hats, of Guatemalan type, that seemed diminutive after the immense sombreros of central Mexico. Each had a hollow rod of cane slung over the shoulder—the local style of thermos bottle. And each was laden with an armful of infants.
The engineer waited patiently while babies were loaded and unloaded. Some of the Indians, embarking, would clamber aboard and receive the children passed up by friends through the windows. Others, disembarking, would clamber down and catch the children tossed to them by friends inside the cars. The confusion was astounding. Every one jabbered in a babel of native dialects. But the good humor of the warm countries always prevailed. Every one seemed eventually to find the right infant. And we would loaf onward through the wilderness, among rolling hills red with coffee berries, past the blue lagoons where schools of tiny fish leaped in silver showers, and wild fowl rose in flocks to skim across the placid waters.
Looking upon the quiet landscape, one would never have suspected that Mexico was on the eve of another chronic insurrection.