II
The haunting melancholy of the high altitude seemed to have affected the natives.
Below, on the coast, the poverty-stricken Indians had appeared contented and happy. On the tableland they were very solemn. A peon marching behind his little burro wore the same stolid, pack-animal expression as the beast itself. There was no animation in the faces. The greater part of the masculine population sat upon the station platforms, wrapped in blankets and meditation, waiting only for another day to pass.
The women, more energetic than the men, still besieged the car windows, offering for sale the local products, not in the cheery manner of the lowland women, but hopelessly and mournfully, as though they expected that no one would buy. Unimaginative as the men-folks, they all sold the same article—whatever article some more energetic ancestor, many years before, had sold in their particular village. At Irapuato it was strawberries; at Celaya a species of fudge in tiny wooden boxes; at Queretaro opals from the neighboring mines; at San Juan del Rio lariats and ropes.
They waited in a bedraggled group as the train pulled in. They all advanced toward the same window. When the first customer did not buy, they shrugged their shoulders and turned away. Gradually it would dawn upon them that there were other passengers, and they would drift out along the sides of the other cars, holding up their baskets in mute appeal.
“It is pulque,” explained a Mexican fellow-passenger. “They are all sodden with it here. Que borachos! What drunkards!”
Pulque, the cheap liquor of the plateau, grows only in the highlands, and sours too quickly to be transported elsewhere. As we ascended toward the 7500-foot altitude of the capital, fields of maguey—the source of the beverage—became more and more frequent until they lined the railway in long even rows that covered the rolling plains to the distant mountain-rim—each cactus resembling a huge blue artichoke, and adding another touch of color to the landscape. In blossoming, the plant sends up a tall stalk from which, if it be tapped, there flows a milky fluid locally known as “aguamiel” or “honey-water,” which ferments very rapidly. Within a few hours it becomes a mild intoxicant with a taste like that of sour buttermilk; within a few hours more it becomes a murder-inspiring poison with a taste which the most profane of mortals could never adequately describe.
In the fields peons could be seen, each with a pigskin receptacle slung over his back, trotting from plant to plant, climbing upon the pulpy leaves of the big cactus as though he were some little bug crawling into a flower, bending over the central pool to suck the liquid into a hollow gourd, and discharging it into the pigskin sack. When the bag was filled, he would trot away to the hacienda with it; a little stale pulque would start it fermenting; on the morrow a series of early trains, the equivalent of the milk trains elsewhere, would carry it to all the neighboring cities to befuddle the population there.
Drunkenness is extremely common in Mexico. Although pulque can not be widely distributed, the Mexicans boil the lower leaves of their cactus and distill therefrom their mescal and tequila—two fiery alcoholic stimulants condemned both by moralists and by connoisseurs of good liquor—which are responsible for most of the acts of violence which transpire in the republic. Yet drunkenness is most prevalent in the highlands, for pulque, while comparatively mild, is the cheapest thing in Mexico, and one can buy a quart or two for a few pennies.
On each station platform the men sat patiently, waiting while the women offered their wares. The old girl probably would not make a sale, but quién sabe? If she did, there would be more money for pulque. Already sodden with it, they wrapped their tattered blankets about them, and watched fatalistically, inhabitants of the world’s richest country, resigned to an empty life, oblivious to the charm of the most fascinating country on all the earth.
For despite its gloom, I know of no country more fascinating than the Mexican plateau.
In the clear mountain air each picturesque detail of the vast landscape stood out distinctly—the peaked hat of a little Indian plodding solemnly behind his burro—a herd of cattle grazing leisurely upon the coarse bunch-grass, mere brown specks against the yellow hills—a lonely white chapel with two slender towers and a massive dome, standing by itself without the suggestion of a possible worshiper within miles and miles—an infrequent hacienda with a host of tiny laborers’ shacks grouped about a crumbling ranch-house that once had been a palace. Yet the indefinable charm of the scene lay not in the details, but in the immensity of the canvas. Against the majestic sweep of the wasteland itself, the details appeared dwarfed and isolated. They gave one a feeling of utter loneliness—even of sadness—a strangely delicious sadness. A bleak, gloomy place was this plateau, yet many years hence, whenever one heard “Mexico,” one would think not of the desert or the jungle, but of these vast stretches of yellow wasteland and this horizon of purple mountains, and one would sense a haunting desire to see them again.